Dear Sister: GenZ, Entrepreneurship and Starting Your Own Business

I sit down with Sumayya and Warda, two young women who have turned their passions into businesses right from their homes. Sumayya runs a home-based bake shop, and Warda is the founder of Ming, an online jewelry store. Both are Gen Z, both started early, and both are here to share what it really looks like to build something your own way. This conversation is not about glossy success stories. It is about the messy, honest, and sometimes lonely road of entrepreneurship, and the quiet shift in mindset that has made it possible for our generation to take this leap.

The spark before the business

For Sumayya, baking started as a kind of therapy. She tells me she found an old copy from class three where she had written, “Flour is my sadness and eggs is the anger. I put it all together and the cake I make is happiness.” It was a child’s attempt to make sense of big feelings, and it stuck. She would bake during exam breaks, pulling all-nighters and making mug cakes to stay awake. The kitchen became her safe space. When her family and friends pushed her to turn it into something more, she started an Instagram page at 16. She thought it would be a blog, a place to share her love for baking. On the second day, a stranger messaged her for brownies. “I was like wow,” she says. The orders kept coming.

Warda’s story is different but carries the same curiosity. She was always the person with a questioning mind, which led her to study business. She tried a small venture with friends at university that did not work out, but instead of walking away, she took those lessons and started Ming. Jewelry was not her forever plan. She knew she wanted to run her own business, and this was a way in. In the long run, she wants to open an agency that helps other small businesses establish themselves. “I will obviously pursue this, but I would also want other things that I am good at,” she says.

Why Gen Z is more willing to take the risk

I ask them about the reaction they got from people around them. Warda says when she started her first business at university, nobody took it seriously. “It was very hard for them to take us seriously,” she recalls. But once the numbers started coming in, that changed. Sumayya’s experience was different. Her friends were encouraging, asking her to bake for their birthdays, and her family was supportive from the start.

We dig into the generational shift. Why does Gen Z seem more open to risk? Warda believes it is because we are constantly bombarded with information. We see case studies, we watch content creators, we have access to tools that did not exist before. Instagram, Shopify, e-commerce, and delivery apps have made starting a business feel within reach. For our parents, a job meant stability. That was enough. The risk of a business did not feel worth it because the capitalist environment was not as demanding. Now, with a double income becoming a necessity, and the economy demanding more, the calculation has changed.

I share a thought that has been on my mind. Millennials were the first to dream of entrepreneurship in Pakistan, but they lacked the guidance and the digital infrastructure. Gen Z has inherited both the freedom to dream and the tools to execute. The risk is lower, and the examples are everywhere. Sumayya sums it up: “We have an entrepreneurial mindset. My siblings are all entrepreneurs.” It is a quiet revolution happening in our homes.

The one-woman show and the hardest part

Running a business from home sounds romantic until you are the baker, the marketer, the customer service rep, and the dispatcher. Sumayya is honest about the weight of it. “I am a one-woman show,” she says. “There are days when you just want to complete your orders and go to sleep and not reply to people.” She laughs, then adds, “Replying to DMs might be the hardest part.” The other challenge is managing riders and delivery, always carrying that anxiety.

For product-based businesses, the customer expects customization, especially with baking. Each order is a conversation, and that direct interaction is hard to delegate. She knows she will need to hire help soon, but handing over the person who talks to your customers is not easy. I tell her that customer service is often the first thing you should hire, but only when you are ready.

Warda, on the other hand, is happy she did not hire a team right away. She learned everything herself: from sourcing to marketing to customer care. Now, when she does build a team, she will know exactly what to expect. “It is important to know everything yourself before you hire,” she says. That is a lesson every small business owner learns the hard way.

The import trap and the local dream

We drift into a deeper conversation about the economy and the choices we make as small business owners. I share my own experience of wanting to create a locally made product. I wanted it to be sustainable, to contribute to the economy. But the reality hit hard. “It was easier to import than to create in my own country,” I tell them. That sentence still feels heavy. Yeh bohat sad hai, it is so sad. The irony is that importing often costs less and gives a better finish, while local manufacturing struggles with quality and consistency. The system is not set up to make local the easy choice.

Sumayya agrees. She ordered baking tools online and got scammed. She could not trace the seller or get a refund. The ease of online shopping also makes it easy to disappear. “It is so easy to create something online with nothing happening in the background,” she says. That is why our parents are cautious. They come from a time when you could touch and feel before buying. Now, with augmented reality try-ons and Amazon stores that let you see clothes on a virtual mirror, the experience is changing, but the trust is still fragile.

We talk about the imbalance between purchasing power and the rise of imported aesthetics. Pretty packaging and cute products are hard to resist. But if we keep importing, we keep sending money out of the country. Warda mentions that she would love to use local materials, but the quality is not there yet. The only way that changes is if we start making a conscious effort, even in small ways, to support local. It is not a black-and-white issue, but it is one we need to keep talking about.

If you have been waiting for a sign

Toward the end, I ask them what they would say to someone who is still holding back. Sumayya does not hesitate. “If this is your sign to start a business, if you have been planning to and you are holding back just because of certain reasons, then you should not.” She says things are much easier now, and the need for financial independence is real. With the economy where it is, having multiple sources of income is not a luxury, it is survival.

Warda nods. She talks about the importance of starting young, before responsibilities pile up. “The time to start is now. Tomorrow it becomes more difficult.” She also reminds me that it is okay to not have a single lifelong plan. Horizontal growth, being a jack of all trades, is not a weakness. The full quote, as she reminds us, is “Jack of all trades, master of none, but often times better than a master of one.” That is the energy we need to carry forward.

Why this conversation stays with me

This episode is not just about cakes and jewelry. It is about the quiet courage of two young women who decided to try, and the generation that is quietly rewriting the rules of work. For any Desi woman, any young mom, any student who is wondering if she can start something small from her kitchen or her phone, this is for you. The tools are there, the risk is less scary than before, and the community of women supporting each other is growing. You do not need to have it all figured out. You just need to take the first step, and then the next, and maybe one day you will look back and realize you built something that is entirely yours.