Planetary Startup Movement: Part 1
Today, the startup movement that originated from Silicon Valley is fanning out around the world. The idea that someone can start and build an impactful company from nearly any country has taken hold globally.
Historically, there have been two sides to this idea. One side believes that the network effects in Silicon Valley are too strong and that any serious entrepreneur needs to move to the Valley. The other, an increasingly larger side, thinks that many more large startups can be built outside of the Bay Area and outside of the U.S., including in emerging economies. I would argue that the latter group is on the right side of history.
To the casual observer, the bubbling up of entrepreneurs globally may seem like either a fad chased after by the younger generation or a cyclical response to a lackluster job market.
I see it differently.
Taking a long term perspective, it becomes apparent that this movement is a historical transition, a permanent socioeconomic change and something that will happen just this once in human history. There is no force in the world more powerful than an idea whose time has come and we are lucky to be living through it.
There are several underlying Megatrends driving this change. While each can be its own book, we will just get to the punchline:
First, knowledge and information are free. And it’s not just basic facts and data that is available via Google or Wikipedia, but highly technical and valuable information are open-sourced in specific hacker or maker communities such as GitHub, Stack Overflow, etc.
Second, the costs and infrastructure requirements for starting are a fraction of what it was just a few years ago. Instead of the $85 servers that Zuckerberg & team had to buy when they wanted to add more users to Facebook, a team today can deploy on Heroku or Amazon AWS for free and scale up as needed. For hardware creators? 3D printers are within the budgets of most universities, libraries and even individuals (and there is always RepRap).
Third, while fundraising is always an appropriately difficult challenge for founders and companies, it has become a dramatically more democratized process. Now, companies collectively raise billions through crowdfunding portals, with the largest campaigns dwarfing seed, angel and even Series A rounds! Specifically, AngelList has offered anyone the chance to become a micro-VC by sourcing and leading a syndicate for startups they see great potential in.
Because of these shifts, the movement is now driven by this generation’s belief in their potential to change the world. For many people around the world, creating and building a company isn’t about trying to be cool and it isn’t even solely about making money, it is about fully embracing the opportunity to make an impact on the planet, to leave something much greater beyond ourselves behind.
We are at a historical junction where all of these Megatrends are coming together, mostly in the last few years, to push entrepreneurs forward.
These changes are permanent. We won’t ever want to give up these newfound opportunities. Just as previous movements like Women Suffrage and Civil Rights, which created permanent societal changes, the planetary startup movement is permanently changing what we believe to be possible and the tools we need to execute on those beliefs.
And because the implications of this movement are permanent, it will only happen once. Airplanes were invented once and we’ve been improving it ever since. Personal computers was invented once and we’ve been improving it ever since. The democratization and globalization of Silicon Valley will take place one time in history and we are living through it today.
By envisioning the world a decade, or even a century into the future, we can see that this revolution is still just in its infancy.
In Part 2, we explore its widespread impact.
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