Thursday, June 23, 2011

2011 is the year entrepreneurship went global

Entrepreneurship is flourishing everywhere. Not just in the US, not just Israel, not just China. Everywhere. The world wide web always held the promise of a flat world, but the startup world is finally flat. An idea is seeded in Chicago, and it very quickly blooms across the world.

The result of this new generation of entrepreneurs is that local companies must race to be global. Groupon couldn’t just launch in the US, hone its product, and then launch internationally in a measured roll-out (much like Yelp has been doing). It has had to race to plant a flag in countless countries around the world if it has any chance of becoming a global brand. AirBnB just started running the same sprint, and they are rumored to be raising a giant warchest to help them get there.

It didn’t used to be like this. Startups could focus on the US and launch internationally when they got there. The competitive race was here, not abroad.  But now, things have changed.  Entrepreneurship has finally gone global, and many US companies hoping to expand internationally are facing stiff competition.