(This is a repost from my daily newsletter The Heretic. The message is important to me – thus it warrants repeating.)

Dear Entrepreneur,

We need you. We – that is the world. Yes, you read that right. The world needs you.

Let me explain: Spain’s youth unemployment rate is now close to 60%. Sixty percent. That is more than every second person under the age of 30 being unemployed. Italy’s youth unemployment rate recently smashed through the 40% mark. The same is true for many other countries all around the globe. We have more than 7 billion people inhabiting this planet with an annual growth rate of 1.3%. That means we double the population every 50 years. A friend recently told me that we need 600 million sustainable jobs by 2020.

I fundamentally believe that the only way to get there is through entrepreneurship. We need people like you who are building companies, solving some of the most pressing problems in the world and create jobs doing so.

These are pretty scary and incredibly exciting times. While there is revolutions and uprisings looming, we will also witness the world’s online population double in the next 5-10 or so years. Imagine what it will mean for the planet to have 2 billion more people with access to the web, Wikipedia and the global marketplace.

With that being said – we have our work cut out for us. Now is the time. Let’s get cranking.