Gen Z entrepreneurs can absolutely start meaningful businesses — and need not wait until they are “big enough” or have “enough capital.” Meaning does not come after success; meaning is a foundation so that success does not leave you hollow inside.
But most young people begin their entrepreneurial journey in the wrong place. The problem is not their skills. It is their question.
The Wrong Question Can Lead You Astray for Years
Some entrepreneurial journeys begin with a genuine frustration — a real question about what one wants to change in the world. That is starting a business with the right question.
Teacher Tạ Minh Tuấn followed that path when founding YUP Education, an educational organization for students in remote areas. Then, after being called a “young entrepreneur” and appearing in Forbes Vietnam 30 Under 30 in 2015 and Forbes Asia 30 Under 30 in 2016, the original question was easily overshadowed. The question gradually shifted from “What can I serve?” to “What do I need to achieve next?”
That is the distance between Entrepreneurship and Starting a Business with Right Livelihood. And this distance occurs not only for one person — it happens to most who enter the whirlpool of titles and expectations.
“Start a business, do not create harmful karma. And if you start a business — practice Starting a Business with Right Livelihood.”
Gen Z Entrepreneurship: A Generation at the Right Time, Yet Most Prone to Losing Direction
Many Gen Z students — second-year, third-year, even first-year — already have ideas, prototypes, and initial funding. This generation acts faster than any before it. That is admirable.
But one thing keeps recurring: many of you know what to do but it is not yet clear why do it. When the “why” is not deep enough, everything can easily collapse one morning when the team falls apart, investors withdraw, or the market does not respond as expected.
Are you there? Or are you following a script someone else wrote for a “successful startup”?
Starting a Business at University: This Is the Golden Moment — Not Because You Are Young
People often say, “Starting a business at university is good because you are young and have nothing to lose.” That is the wrong view.
Starting a business at university is good — not because you have nothing to lose, but because you do not yet have too much to protect. You do not yet have a rigid leadership ego. You do not yet have the inertia of the “successful entrepreneur self.” You are still flexible enough to bend in the right direction.
It is a young founder's most precious resource — not youth, but not yet frozen.
Awakening is not becoming someone else — it is returning to yourself. For a founder, that “self” is the original mission that moved you.
What Is Starting Right Livelihood — And Why It Differs from “Building a Good Startup”
Starting Right Livelihood is not starting a business for charity. It is not abandoning profit to “do good.” It is an entirely different view of the nature of business.
From this perspective, business is a means of service — not a purpose of accumulation. When you build from the question “What real value can I create for others?”, every business decision — from products to how you treat employees to how you choose partners — has a clear anchor.
That anchor is not a KPI. That anchor is core values you are willing to uphold even at a cost.
- Ordinary entrepreneurship: Find a market → Find a product → Find profit → (Perhaps) think about meaning.
- Right-Karma Entrepreneurship: Clear mission → Design products serving that mission → Profit naturally results from the value created.
It is not a far-fetched ideal. This is the most sustainable business thinking — effective in practice and demonstrated through many founders' journeys that made mission the starting point rather than the destination.
If you want to go deeper into this framework of thinking, the book Starting a Business with Right Livelihood trình bày Tứ diệu đế, Bát chánh đạo và Thập nhị nhân duyên áp dụng vào công việc và kinh doanh.
Business Is Not a Battlefield
There is something teacher Tạ Minh Tuấn often says to young founders: “The marketplace is not a battlefield — it is a school filled with love.”
It sounds soft. In fact, this is the firmest view of long-term business.
When you see the market as a battlefield, you fight to defeat competitors. That energy runs out very quickly. When you see the market as an environment for learning and service, you seek a deeper understanding of users' real needs, build relationships instead of transactions, and create an ecosystem instead of fighting for market share.
Gen Z is the first generation to grow up with full information about climate change, inequality, and the collapse of many old models. You do not need anyone to convince you that business must be responsible. You feel it in your bones.
The question is: are you brave enough to hold on to that sense when growth pressure arrives?
Practice Now: A 5-Minute Exercise to Rediscover Your Mission
No meditation or special setting is required. Just a sheet of paper and 5 quiet minutes.
Step 1 (1 minute): Write your answer to this question—do not think too long; immediately write the first thing that comes to mind: “If I knew for certain I would not fail, what problem would I want to solve for the world?”
Step 2 (2 minutes): Reread that sentence. Then ask: “How does this relate to a real experience in my life — something that once hurt me, something I lacked, something I wished I had?” Write it down.
Step 3 (2 minutes): Look at your current business idea—or the idea you are nurturing. Ask: “Does it serve what I just wrote down? Or does it serve something else — ego, pressure, trends?”
Do not rush to judge the answer. Simply see it. Truth always begins with clear seeing.
“When I am quiet enough, someone within me always knows the answer.”
You Do Not Have to Choose Between Success and Meaning
Meaning and profit are not opposites. They are two sides of the same coin — when you create real value, profit is the market's way of saying “thank you.”
But if you chase profit without meaning as your anchor, you will build a number—and wake up one day wondering: For whom am I doing this?
Perhaps you have been there, or are close to it now. It is not easy to recognize. But it is entirely possible to begin again with the right question.
A Gen Z entrepreneur's journey to building a meaningful business does not begin with a funding round. It begins with a quiet, honest question, asked one morning when you are brave enough to sit with yourself.
That question is waiting for you.
Tạ Minh Tuấn (Saga)
Frequently asked questions
Where should Gen Z entrepreneurs begin when starting a meaningful business?
Begin with “What do I want to serve?” instead of “What kind of company do I want to build?”—when the mission is clear, every business decision has an anchor.
How does Starting Right Livelihood differ from ordinary entrepreneurship?
Ordinary entrepreneurship seeks a market before considering meaning; Starting Right Livelihood begins with mission and regards profit as the natural result of the value created.
Should university students start a business immediately?
Yes — not because you “have nothing to lose,” but because at this stage you are not yet hardened by a leadership ego or old inertia. That flexibility is a resource more valuable than capital.
How do I know whether my startup idea is truly meaningful?
Ask honestly: ‘How does this relate to an actual experience in my life?’ If you cannot find a personal answer, you may well be chasing a trend rather than a mission.
Where can I explore Starting a Business with Right Livelihood in greater depth?
Teacher Tạ Minh Tuấn has a book of the same name, Starting a Business with Right Livelihood, available at books.inti.foundation, specifically for those who want to build a business on a foundation of mission and core values.
Khóa học liên quan tại Inti School: Thiền & NLP cho nhà lãnh đạo