{"id":552642,"date":"2026-06-25T01:51:21","date_gmt":"2026-06-25T01:51:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/552642\/"},"modified":"2026-06-25T01:51:21","modified_gmt":"2026-06-25T01:51:21","slug":"a-small-business-platform-expands-its-ai-driven-advice-tool-finding-solopreneurs-are-flocking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/552642\/","title":{"rendered":"A Small Business Platform Expands Its AI-Driven Advice Tool, Finding Solopreneurs Are Flocking"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"IMG_3252\"<\/p>\n

Social media agency founder Ashley Rector used an AI powered tool to guide her when deciding whether to form an LLC for a new business idea.<\/p>\n

ZenBusiness<\/p>\n

When Ashley Rector, founder of the social media and digital marketing agency Quimby Digital,<\/a> was considering turning a new product line into its own business, she tapped an AI-powered tool for guidance.<\/p>\n

A user of ZenBusiness, an AI-powered platform that assists founders with business formations and compliance, she used the Velo AI guide baked into that platform. Velo, which the company bills as an \u201cAI co-founder,\u201d provides its customers with guidance on the \u201cnext right step\u201d in building their businesses.<\/p>\n

\u201cI set out to launch a new product line and wanted LLC protection for it, so I had Velo help me figure out whether the business idea even made sense,\u201d she said in a statement. \u201cIt gave me the building blocks and had my brain marinating on what I needed to do next.\u201d<\/p>\n

Once she decided to go ahead with the LLC, Velo helped her keep it in good standing, keep up with annual filings, and obtain her EIN. \u201cI even asked Velo about my target market, and it walked me through exactly how to run the analysis,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

ZenBusiness<\/a>, a B Corp based in Austin, Texas, announced today that it is expanding the Velo AI guide with open access and new capabilities. The expanded experience focuses on the Velo \u201cblueprint,\u201d designed to show them the steps, tools and guidance relevant to their situation. As they complete the steps, it generates business ideas, validates opportunities, estimates startup costs and advises on entity selection. It has enabled those who create a free account to save their blueprint and view it from any device. Nearly 75% of ZenBusiness\u2019s customers are solo operators. <\/p>\n

Ross Buhrdorf, CEO and founder of ZenBusiness, based in Austin, Texas, is expanding the site\u2019s tools in anticipation of a small business creation boom, in which many people displaced by AI turn to solo entrepreneurship.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt ZenBusiness, we provide the business plan piece, we have the piece that pulls in your financials, and we have the piece that talks about what it\u2019s going to cost to start up this business,\u201d said Buhrdorf in an interview yesterday. \u201cWe\u2019re enabling all this, and we\u2019re trying to make these folks successful\u2014because it is a coming wave. People are going to be displaced, and what are they doing to do? They\u2019re going to have to do something. And so we want to do firmly at ZenBusiness is be there to enable them.\u201d<\/p>\n

New business formation applications reach a record 5.62 million in 2025, up 8.2% from 2024, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau<\/a>. This is roughly twice the pre-pandemic baseline of about 3.5 million in 2019. Growth in these applications is up by about 17% in 2026, to date.<\/p>\n

Ross Buhrdorf, CEO and founder of ZenBusiness, believes that more people will be starting businesses as AI leads to displacement in the employment world.<\/p>\n

ZenBusiness<\/p>\n

Buhrdorf taps his experience as a serial entrepreneur in building the ZenBusiness platform. He previously was co-founder and chief technology officer of HomeAway, a vacation rental marketplace acquired by Expedia in 2015 in a $3.9 billion exit. ZenBusiness, founded that same year, has grown to 600 employees and a valuation of over $1 billion, according to Buhrdorf.<\/p>\n

ZenBusiness first introduced Velo in July 2025 and has handled more than 2 million conversations since then, the company says. It resolves customer needs using the Velo AI guide in 72% of conversations and routes the others to human team members if judgment, empathy, or added certainty is needed, according to the company. More than half of its customers have used Velo, and 53% return to it in the same month, the company found. <\/p>\n

In developing Velo, ZenBusiness responded to data showing that among its nearly one million small business customers, many search for information related to the stage they have reached in the business process, such as launching a website or trying to determine if they need a license. The tool identifies action steps for them.<\/p>\n

Buhrdorf says ZenBusiness is simultaneously focusing on curating solutions for its users, partnering with companies such as the website builder Squarespace as more people create their own opportunities through entrepreneurship. <\/p>\n

\u201cCompanies have got to embrace this change because it\u2019s coming,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Social media agency founder Ashley Rector used an AI powered tool to guide her when deciding whether to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":552643,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[178],"tags":[79,18,236,19,17,16788,236651,31727,934,236649,236650,236648],"class_list":["post-552642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entrepreneurship","tag-business","tag-eire","tag-entrepreneurship","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-llc","tag-one-person-business","tag-solopreneur","tag-startup","tag-velo","tag-velo-ai","tag-zenbusiness"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116808246808673373","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=552642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552642\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/552643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=552642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=552642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=552642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}