The Explosive Growth of Startups
I’m convinced there’s a fundamental change happening in the way work gets done. It’s becoming normal to start a startup. There will be a lot more startups in 10 years than there are now.”
–Paul Graham today in his post announcing changes at Y Combinator
The statement above stood out to me today as I saw the news coming out of Y Combinator. It’s true. There is explosive growth of startups everywhere.
I’ve seen many reasons for this shift. Off the top of my head, here are some of those:
- The insane exits of the very visible unicorn companies. Look no further than this week’s acquisition of WhatsApp for $19B, or over $345M per employee (they have 55 employees)
- The incredibly low cost of getting to a minimally viable product in software, typically just a few thousand dollars should suffice
- The down market causes people that would otherwise be heads-down in BigCos to have their ears raised
- The more listless nature of young people, compared to previous generations, contributes to an increased subset cutting their own way to a career, like this guy who does popsicles in Atlanta
- The increased acceptance of startups as a viable option, including the rise of startup ecosystems, incubators, and seed stage capital
This afternoon I met with a guy that started a pork rind business in Atlanta. Awesome story of a guy noticing a gap in branding and carving out a niche for himself in an established market.
What are other reasons you have heard accounting for the explosive growth of startup?