How significantly the perception of an entrepreneur has evolved over the past ten years is fascinating. Young founders dominated the scene, and the majority of them used the development of smartphones, the internet, and the increasing digital realm to create products that almost completely altered our way of life.

Today’s typical individual gets up and checks their social media feeds or email accounts and if they are one of those who worry about their level of productivity, rely on one of the task management or to-do list applications. After having breakfast, they either take their car or call an Uber to go to the office. These first few hours after waking up highlight two very interesting points—the extent to which our personal lives have become digital, and how many of these services were created by young entrepreneurs who are under 40.

Some of these entrepreneurs have made significant changes to the economy as well as our daily lives. The president of Indonesia has appointed the founder of the Indonesian ride-sharing startup Grab to the cabinet as a result of his economic influence. Similar to this, Bangladeshi startups like ShopUp and ShebaXYZ, both launched by extremely young entrepreneurs, have significantly impacted the country’s economy. They have aided by increasing employment (both inside their own organization and by establishing a market for other firms and assisting them in growing, which results in more employment from these organizations), luring foreign investment, and boosting national revenue as well as tech adoption. However, these are just two companies among many other examples as such.

This new era of business model has come a long way and still has deep dimensions yet to explore.

Why, therefore, did these digital start-ups have such a big impact? Business models have altered recently, according to a very detailed article from the Harvard Business Review that was published in April 2016. According to the conventional theory of economics, demand and supply factors in the market determine the “market-clearing” price in a physical marketplace where buyers and sellers engage in exchanges. But in the 2000s, internet markets like Amazon and eBay started to emerge. The number of consumers and sellers determined how efficient these markets were. Even in Bangladesh, where e-commerce is still plagued by a great deal of mistrust, there have been a lot more mobile and e-commerce transactions in recent years. This shift to a digital marketplace has been aided by easy and secure payment systems through both bank cards and bKash. But what really helped make some of these digital start-ups make an impact was the fact that the services offered by these start-ups were solving a mass problem.

These startups have contributed to the creation of a platform, or marketplace, where they are now attracting a large number of buyers and sellers for a variety of services (Pathao—food, delivery, etc.; bKash—bills, ticketing, etc.). The new era of business is a business of digital platforms, and marketplaces that have grown to a certain size to serve a sizable population size, and this is precisely what was discussed in the Harvard Business Review article.

This new era of business model has come a long way and still has deep dimensions yet to explore. Therefore, in order to make sure that we see more of these startups come to life, we need to make sure they are favorable and sustainable environments for them. In order to make an impact sustainable, the scale of the impact and the nature of the impact need to be recurring over a certain period of time. Now, it is natural that the impact will be very high when the digital marketplaces have just reached a critical stage, and such astronomical growth might not continue in the future. But, even after reaching a level of maturity, digital entrepreneurship still shows a potential of sustainable steady impact for the future of Bangladesh.

Especially in the era of the digital revolution, the future of young entrepreneurship is particularly bright. And if we can educate and inspire the next generation in this area, Bangladesh might expand quicker, offering more employment opportunities, more convenient services, and projects that will shape the world of the future. To take advantage of it and reap its immense advantages in the future, however, it must be used, just like any other opportunity, with the aid of appropriate education and policy.