Coffee, Dreams and Global Start-Ups

I just read an interesting article on last week’s The Economist, and tingled by this idea of how disruptive start-ups like Uber, AirBnB, and Amazon Cloud Drive reinvented not only how the business works, but also how the company made.

Today there is this start up’s privilege: “go global without being big themselves”.

As a small entrepreneur, you don’t need to permanently employ international experts, just hire foreign freelancers on Upwork. You don’t need to list publicly to get FDI, just raise crowdsourcing fund on Kickstarter. You don’t need to roam in trade fairs to get off-shore suppliers, just search on Alibaba. You get basically everything you need to start a global business, just by few clicks under your fingers.

With that kind of privilege, no wonder today’s start-ups made their way above so unbelievably fast. WhatsApp was only 5 years old when Facebook bought it with USD 19 billion deal. AirBnB is just 7 years old and Uber is 6 years old when both companies, respectively, reached USD 25.5 billion and USD 50 billion valuation this year. FYI, as new player in hospitality industry, AirBnB valuation is even nearly the same as Hilton Hotel and four times higher than Hyatt Hotel, which have been on business for decades.

Some people argue that those crazily high-valued tech start-ups might just be ‘bubble’ forming. No one can guarantee the upcoming commensurate reward of such huge investment. But those apps users’ base are proven to be remarkably growing each year. Guess this is how disruptive business works, isn’t it? They always come quick, unexpected, and ruin the whole game rules.

So now if a young man brag about building global company in a flash time, don’t doubt it. He might do. It’s easier now for small entrepreneurs to dream bigger–and realise it faster. As the article put it, today’s start-ups are simply “fuelled by coffee and dreams”, then they are ready to conquer the world…