3 Entrepreneurs Who Built Empires from Their Laptops
Jul 18 | 2025
The face of entrepreneurship has shifted from traditional brick-and-mortar models to digital-first businesses. The new generation of entrepreneurs follows the “laptops as launchpads” concept. Internet connectivity, creativity, and business acumen are the primary ingredients for building global ventures from anywhere, as long as there is WiFi access.
Before we highlight three new digital entrepreneurs, let’s explore what sets them apart from previous generations.
What Sets the New Generation of Entrepreneurs Apart?
Success ultimately depends on the ability to shift from one skill set to another. These four attributes are non-negotiable for the new generation of entrepreneurs:
- Adaptability: The primary attribute for new-generation entrepreneurs is the ability to adapt to change at lightning speed. With the introduction of daily innovations, being able to think fast and pivot as necessary is essential.
- Resourcefulness: Starting any business, especially a digital one, takes time and money. Taking advantage of free online tools and outsourcing busy work takes skill—but it’s essential.
- Obsessive learning: The digital world can change on a dime. Craving knowledge, reading online resources, and learning from mentors are key ways new entrepreneurs prepare for success.
- Authenticity and trust: Today, it’s easy to hide behind a computer screen. For any business to be successful, consumers need to believe in the company and its founders. Transparency, honesty, and trustworthiness are minimum requirements.
With these skill sets, the new generation of entrepreneurs is only limited by their imagination. What opportunities are available to them? It’s time to think outside the box.
Less Conventional Success Paths
Bricks-and-mortar stores are on their way out, and digital is in. This shift is reflected in how even major companies like Amazon earn revenue. Amazon is still the world’s largest online e-commerce business, but only 39% of its income stream comes from retail. Third-party seller services, advertising, subscriptions, and cloud services all contribute.
Today, entrepreneurs equipped with just a laptop can compete in the following fields:
- Niche blogging: Become an authority on a subject, get site visitors, and monetize it with affiliate links and advertising.
- Influencing: Forget celebrity endorsement—the new generation of micro-influencers (1,000+ followers) can make money by becoming an authority on one specific vertical (travel, health, beauty, etc.). By engaging with their audience, they can monetize their site with brand collaborations, product placements, sponsored content, and affiliate partnerships.
- Subscription-based communities: With so much misinformation online, users need reliable sources of information about their interests. Enter the world of digital communities. Founders build private forums, Discord groups, and Slack channels around these interests. They make their money from monthly or annual membership fees, exclusive content bundles, and access to group coaching and mentoring.
New Generation Entrepreneurial Success Stories
The new generation of entrepreneurs, armed with the attributes listed above, have managed to build massive empires from their laptops. Here are three entrepreneurial success stories:
The Super Tan Brothers
Steven and Evan Tan are two Singaporean brothers who spent their downtime playing online games. Their mother told them to stop wasting their skills on games and use them for something useful. The Super Tan Brothers listened and are now household names in e-commerce across Asia.
While Evan focused on getting his BA, Steven hit the ground running and created his own e-commerce stores. His first successful years were 2008 and 2009, with his stores earning $400K-$500K per month.
Steven had a few failures along the way: a Groupon startup in Shanghai in 2010 and a cosmetic startup in 2011. In 2012, he crowdfunded a watch product called Kreyos. Two years later, he closed the business at a loss.
It was when the brothers joined forces in 2016, Steven as the ideas guy and Evan as the action guy, that they shone. Their drop shipping business regularly achieves seven-figure sales most months; one of their stores earned $360,000 in a single day. Today, they still manage their empire from their laptops.
Like all good entrepreneurs, they now share their knowledge at special events, summits, and Mastermind retreats to inspire and help other entrepreneurs achieve their e-commerce goals.
John Wright
John Wright started his career as a professional online gambler. He used his laptop to learn advanced online casino strategies and honed his skills in bonus-hunting and learning blackjack tactics. Along the way, he noticed gaps in the iGaming sector. He felt there weren’t enough effective data-driven affiliate tools and not much transparent, trustworthy information about casino sites.
From there, it took off—affiliate deals, SEO, and software all came together. John co-founded StatsDrone, a SaaS tool that simplifies and automates affiliate tracking for iGaming businesses.
Through data, SEO, and affiliate deals with major platforms like Casinos.com, he’s become an authoritative voice and innovator in the online gambling content and software space.
Michelle Schroeder-Gardner
Struggling with student debt, Michelle Schroeder-Gardner began blogging about how she got out from under it. Her blog, Making Sense of Cents, began in 2011, more as a personal story than an educational tool. Her writing struck a chord with many others, and soon her site started getting the kind of traffic volume that led her to monetize it.
She learned about affiliate marketing and leveraging sponsored posts and soon began earning $10,000 a month. Today, still from her laptop, she’s reduced her work time to only a few hours. She’s perfected the systematization of content production and scheduling posts, automating emails, and optimizing SEO, letting the systems do the work for her.
She now earns $40,000 to $100,000 per month, with more than $5 million in total revenue. She openly shares her strategies with anyone else keen to make money from blogging. Her biggest tip is to learn how to adapt to new opportunities in the digital space.
Unleash the Entrepreneur Inside You
The digital world of entrepreneurship isn’t at capacity. There’s plenty of room for new bloggers, influencers, e-commerce professionals, and those who spot a gap in features or information to succeed. Learn to adapt, be resourceful, never stop learning, and build authority. Then be like Michelle Schroeder-Gardner—work a few hours a day and spend the rest of your life counting your money.
