Andrew Yang on Cost-Reducing Startups and the Future of Business Models | 2026

Andrew Yang: the Next Wave of Startups Will Return Money to Customers

Entrepreneur and former presidential candidate Andrew Yang has identified a potential direction for the next wave of startup opportunities, according to a recent interview with TechCrunch reported by Yahoo Finance. His theory begins with a question most founders do not ask: what if a business model focused on returning money to customers rather than extracting it?

Yang drew inspiration from Mark Cuban, specifically from Cuban's startup Cost Plus Drugs, which sells pharmaceuticals at cost. Yang compiled a list of essential spending categories: housing, education, food, fuel, transportation, media, and wireless. He selected wireless as his entry point and launched Noble Mobile last September. The company operates as a mobile virtual network operator, offering cell service at a fraction of traditional carrier prices and refunding customers for unused data.

Yang sees a business opportunity in reducing the cost of living, particularly as artificial intelligence threatens to compress wages and displace workers. He pointed to Cost Plus Drugs, Noble Mobile, dumb phone makers like Light Phone, and online grocery store Misfits Markets as early examples of an emerging business category where the startup's value proposition is the margin it returns to the customer. Yang commented that as AI absorbs value and jobs, Americans will seek ways to meet basic needs, and fulfilling those needs less expensively represents a rich vein of opportunity.

This perspective stems from Yang's 2020 presidential campaign, during which he advocated for Universal Basic Income as a response to AI-related workforce displacement and wealth concentration. Although the campaign did not succeed, Yang believes the thesis has become more relevant. He remains an advocate for UBI, arguing that value generated by AI companies should be redistributed to average Americans. However, he expressed uncertainty about whether the government would be the vehicle for that redistribution or would use collected wealth to plug a hole without productive outcomes. Yang stated there is room for a direct connection between money and people.

Yang argues that where policy fails, market incentives can intervene. Noble Mobile is his attempt to demonstrate this principle. Since its launch last September, the company has grown to thousands and thousands of customers and is generating millions in revenue.