2025 is shaping up to be a big year for small businesses according to our next guest and that means big opportunities in software. Here with more is Hello Alice co-founder and president Elizabeth Gore. Great to have you back in studio here. Let's talk about some of these small business opportunities. What what are they and how can they benefit small business?

Yeah. Happy to be.

So look, there's going to be about five times the amount of small businesses launching in 2025 than our history. So any investments in software that's going to enable them to sell. So think of creative sellers. So Shopify is a great example of that. Payments and receivables. That's a big thing right now. So look at Square, look at NerdWallet, look what Mastercard is doing. And then we all talk about AI, but AI for small business is going to be huge. So 99% of small businesses or businesses in this country are small. And so think about if AI can enable them to be more efficient, that's going to be really exciting.

That's fascinating. Beyond software, what could this boom in small businesses mean for banks as well?

So if you watch advertising right now, banks are clamoring to get that new small business owner that's opening. Once they get a bank account, they very rarely ever leave it. So you see the BFAs, the Wells, the US Banks, um working really hard to capture these net new. Now, I hope they'll make the capital cheaper for our small business owners because it's still pretty expensive right now.

How expensive is it?

It's too expensive. And and if you look at cost of goods solds being high right now with inflation, you couple those two and it just doesn't match up to the opportunity right now.

Interesting. All right, two big themes for small businesses that we're going to be tracking and software and banking going into next year. Elizabeth, thanks so much for taking the time.

Thanks for having me.