Not Every Entrepreneur Needs a Pitch Deck: The Missing Middle in Asia’s Future of Work

In Asia’s business conversation, entrepreneurship often arrives with familiar imagery: a pitch deck, a venture-capital round, a technology platform and ambitions for rapid scale. At the other end of the future-of-work debate is the gig worker – driving passengers, delivering food, completing freelance assignments through a digital platform.

Between them sits a much larger and less visible group: people who may never raise external capital or build a technology company, yet are still learning to find customers, sell products or services, manage transactions and earn independently. They are the missing middle of Asia’s entrepreneurship economy.

The scale is already substantial. According to the Asian Development Bank’s Asia Small and Medium-Sized Enterprise Monitor 2025, micro, small and medium-sized enterprises accounted, on average, for 99.8% of all enterprises and 67.6% of the workforce across 26 Asian and Pacific economies, contributing an average of 38.7% of national economic output. Most operate in services rather than the technology sectors that dominate business headlines.

Those figures do not capture every individual earning through informal or independent commercial activity. But they point to a larger truth. Asia’s economies are supported not only by large employers and high-growth startups, but by millions of people operating at a much smaller scale.

Entrepreneurship often begins before a company does

For many people, entrepreneurship does not begin with registering a company or pitching investors. It begins with securing a first customer; understanding what someone needs, learning how to price and sell, keeping basic records and earning repeat business.

“Entrepreneurship is often discussed as though it begins with setting up a company or raising capital,” says Mattias Mildenborn, Chief Executive Officer of QNET, an Asian-founded lifestyle and wellness direct selling company. “For many, it starts with recognizing customer needs, conveying value, handling transactions, and fostering relationships that lead to repeat business.”

The barriers facing aspiring entrepreneurs are not limited to finance. Developing a product, establishing payment systems, finding suppliers and learning how to reach customers can all be significant obstacles. Business models that provide some of this infrastructure such as social commerce, home-based services, online reselling, micro-franchising, creator-led businesses and direct selling, can offer a more manageable starting point.

They are not identical models, and they do not carry the same opportunities or risks. But they reflect a broader shift towards smaller, more flexible and decentralized forms of economic participation.

Direct selling is one of the more established of these models, allowing individuals to market products directly to customers without opening a retail outlet or building a supply chain of their own.  It is not the same as gig work. A platform worker generally completes a task whose price and terms are substantially determined by the platform. A direct seller operates within a company’s product and compensation framework but takes greater responsibility for finding customers, explaining products and building commercial relationships.

“The debate should not be about whether one label is better than another,” Mildenborn says. “The real question is whether the model helps a person develop capabilities and relationships that retain value beyond the next transaction.”

Flexible work provides income. Enterprise can also build capability

Flexible work provides important access to income and can allow people to work around education, caregiving and other commitments. But flexibility alone does not always translate into greater economic agency.

A June 2026 report by the United Nations Development Programme described the gig economy in Asia and the Pacific as a source of flexible work arrangements and platform-enabled efficiency, while also flagging economic volatility, fraudulent platforms and limited social protection.

Microenterprise is not immune to similar uncertainty. Income may fluctuate and success is never guaranteed. At its best, however, it allows capabilities to accumulate over time: sales and communication skills, financial discipline, product knowledge, customer relationships and a professional reputation.

“The value of micro-entrepreneurship should not be measured only by the next sale,” Mildenborn says. “It should also be measured by what the individual learns. How to understand customers, communicate responsibly, manage money, build trust and remain consistent when results do not come immediately.”

This is also why micro-entrepreneurship should not be promoted as a shortcut to wealth. Building even a small business requires sustained effort, learning and a willingness to accept uncertainty.

Low barriers can be a strength – and a vulnerability

Making entrepreneurship more accessible is worthwhile, but low barriers to participation cut both ways.

Problems arise when income possibilities are exaggerated, when recruitment is prioritized over genuine customer demand, or when participants make claims that a company has not authorized. Responsible microenterprise requires clear standards that have genuine products and customers at the center, no suggestion that earnings are automatic, training that addresses responsible selling, and enforcement when participants breach the rules.

“Accessibility without accountability is not empowerment,” Mildenborn says. “Companies have a responsibility to set realistic expectations, keep genuine product demand at the center, provide proper training and take action when standards are breached. Trust cannot be built through opportunity alone. It must be earned through conduct.”

 For the direct selling industry, this is a defining credibility test.  Independent distributors typically operate independently rather that as company employees, but their conduct still shapes how the businesses they represent, and the wider industry, are perceived.

An Asian business model moving outwards

QNET illustrates a company that developed in the opposite direction from the familiar story of international brands entering Asia as a growth market.

Founded in Hong Kong in 1998, its experience reflects the complexity of building an Asian-founded company across different cultures, markets and regulatory systems. Mildenborn took over as CEO in 2026 after more than two decades in the international direct selling industry.

“Going global from Asia is not simply a matter of reproducing the same playbook in every country,” he says. “Consumer expectations, regulations and cultural norms differ. A company has to localize how it communicates and operates while keeping its standards around products, conduct and customer protection consistent.”

Technology makes that reach easier but it also increases the speed at which poor practices and reputational problems can spread. Digital scale must therefore be matched by stronger oversight.

Asia needs more On-Ramps without Shortcuts

Not every microentrepreneur will build a large company; many will stay small or part-time, and some will decide that entrepreneurship it is not for them. That does not make the experience insignificant. Learning to approach a customer, explain value, manage finances and take responsibility for an outcome builds useful commercial capability even when the enterprise itself stays modest.

The goal is to create credible entry points through which people can test their abilities. The businesses providing those entry points should then be judged by harder measures: whether genuine customer demand exists, whether claims are accurate, whether training is meaningful, and whether participants gain  stronger capabilities than they had when they began.

Not every entrepreneur needs a pitch deck. But every aspiring entrepreneur deserves a fair, transparent and responsible place to begin.