Americas Enterprising Spirit Is Booming After Decades-Long Slump

Cassidy Winkler was working as a flight attendant on private jets when inspiration struck.It was the offseason for the professional hockey players she helped ferry around, and things at her job were slow.Eager for a diversion and missing the Pilates she had come to love as a college student, she went searching for studios near her home in Madison, Wis., but couldn’t find any.“That’s when I came up with the idea,” she said.She started researching how to start her own boutique Pilates business, including what kind of training instructors would need.

By early 2025 — and with assistance from chatbots including ChatGPT — she had come up with a name, Revel Method Pilates, a logo and a plan.Soon, Ms.Winkler, 26, had opened studios in Lake Geneva, Madison and Monona.

She now has 65 employees and is set to unveil a fourth studio this year.Across the country, founders like Ms.Winkler are powering an entrepreneurial renaissance.Jump-started by the pandemic, when a confluence of factors including mass layoffs and remote work led to a flood of business creation, and supercharged by the rise of artificial intelligence, start-up activity is booming after a decades-long slump.Americans filed 5.7 million applications last year to start new businesses, according to the Census Bureau, the most in the two decades the government has kept track.

New business applications through the first half of this year continued to climb....