The current batch of tech companies claim to be disruptive, but they're all derivatives of the rare unicorns that scaled globally right out of the gate and now dominate their space--and whatever new spaces attract their fancy.
It's an article of quasi-religious faith in tech circles that a few of the hundreds of start-ups touting their "disruptive" potential will blossom into super-profitable giants like Google and Facebook, or fast-growing companies like AirBnB that may not yet have profits but which have scaled fast enough to dominate their space--and richly reward early investors.
Two recent Guardian (U.K.) stories on the Digital Gold Rush frenzy in San Francisco and Silicon Valley cite this faith in the inevitability of "the next big (and hugely profitable) thing" as the basic justification for investors and venture capitalists to spread billions of dollars over hundreds of new start-ups--many which started somewhere else in the world but which migrated to the Bay Area to tap the seemingly inexhaustible venture-capital vein of cash.
Silicon Valley braces itself for a fall: 'There'll be a lot of blood' Wannabe entrepreneurs are still piling in to San Francisco, but there’s a sense that time is running out on the exuberant startup world
Is the dotcom bubble about to burst (again)? In Silicon Valley, millions of dollars change hands every day as investors hunt the next big thing – the ‘unicorn’, or billion-dollar tech firm. There are now almost 150, but can they all succeed?
The possibility that none of the current batch of start-ups will scale up and reward early investors with 100-fold returns is the darkest sacrilege in the Tech Faith.
The idea that tech has exhausted ideas that can create tens of billions of value almost overnight is so counter to accepted beliefs that it is akin to declaring the Earth is flat.
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