⏱ Back in time

Silicon Valley, startups, and what we can learn from them!

Hi everyone! 👋

This is Marine. Before I begin, I would like to say welcome to the new 21 subscribers. 📊 TWR is all about trends and how each intertwines with each other.

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⏱ Back in time

Silicon Valley, startups, and what we can learn from them!

History of startups

When I was not even born, in the 1900s

Humans discovered electricity. And that was dope at that time. But, nothing compared to what we later invented…

If we think of a startup as a highly scalable tech company aiming for rapid growth, we can start to look for the first startup in history. For example, Edison General Electric company (now GE), could be thought of as one of the first startups. The growth and difficult path to victory for that company are similar to a typical startup journey. Many companies like Nokia could also be thought of as a startup in their early days. However, none of these companies could be considered a startup in their current state as they are now large corporations.

The startup boom in Silicon Valley didn’t really start until the end of the 1990s when the dot.com boom took over. The belief in technology and the possibility that the internet could change the world grew to unparalleled heights. Companies like Amazon and Netscape were paving the way and created the sense that success was waiting for everyone who knew how to register a domain. Things got out of hand and the dot.com bubble burst, causing one of the biggest crashes in the global economy in recent decades.

Even though the dot.com bubble showed that every idea doesn’t have value just because it’s on the internet, the belief in technology and the internet didn’t die out.

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When I was born, around the early 2000s

The first startups were founded. Their goal was to scale even faster than any corporation at that time.

After the dot.com bubble, the startup community learned from it, moved on, and even accelerated their speed. If we look at the American major technology companies like Facebook, Uber, Airbnb, Twitter, Linked In, Tesla, or Dropbox, none of them existed 20 years ago – even Google was founded only 21 years ago.

The internet and other modern technologies have created huge business opportunities and the possibility to grow companies rapidly. All of the above-mentioned companies have grown into billion-dollar valuations in just a few years.

These companies have had a fundamental impact on our world. The world's largest media company, Facebook, has no content creators on its payroll. The world's largest hotel chain, Airbnb, owns no hotels. The world’s largest taxi company, Uber, don’t own a single taxi. And so forth. Technology companies have shaken many industries and captured markets from traditional companies.

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And now, in 2020

Here we are in a digital world where entrepreneurship is a banal thing to do. Here is what we know:

• The startup phenomenon is no longer confined to Silicon Valley or even the US, but rather it has become a fully global phenomenon with growth centers all over the world.

• Many developing countries have startup centers and active incubators and accelerators, enabling thus a fertile ground for new kinds of entrepreneurial ideas to grow.

• Startups are nice but they fail all the time. An estimated 90% of new startups fail. 34% of startups close within their first two years. Just over 50% of businesses make it to their fifth year.

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Learn from others’ mistakes

In the United States alone, over 500,000 companies are started each month! Needless to say, many of these companies will not make it. In fact, most of them won’t. So how do you make sure your company is one of the lucky few? It’s simple. You learn from the ones who have made it. According to David Kidder in “The Startup Playbook”:

• Cultivate a future-oriented mindset: Spot the trend before it even starts & react quickly.

• What worked yesterday, won’t work today

• Anticipate solutions to obvious problems.

• Create mental snapshots: visions of yourself having accomplished ambitious but concrete goals.

• Be careful about sharing it too openly. You may find yourself in the discouraging position of having to constantly defend your business model against the skeptical remarks of friends & family. OR, someone might steal it from you.

• Identify inefficiently used resources and come up with an efficient solution. Think about how you could use what we already have more efficiently. Or, come up with new functions for things normally used for one purpose.

• Don’t only depend on yourself. Think of the enthusiasm and engagement of your employees and customers.

• Invest your energy in satisfying your customers’ wishes and needs.

• Develop top-notch products. That means not only paying attention to what’s needed but paying attention to what’s wanted as well. 

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