

Startups: Silicon Valley vs. The Emerging World - llambda
http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/26/startups-silicon-valley-vs-the-emerging-world/

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trevelyan
Picture a bootstrapped company that earns 2000 USD each month when it starts
and doubles revenues annually. While this is a successful startup by almost
any definition, note that it takes over 5 years for this business to cross the
half-million mark in sales.

So why don't the founders take money and use it to accelerate growth?
Realistically, in most places that aren't Silicon Valley, this sort of
business will have trouble raising any meaningful amount on halfway decent
terms until years 3-4, at which point any sane founder will be loath to give
up equity in exchange for cash.

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compman775
Your example company would eventually be awesome to own. It's annual revenue
after y years would be r(y) = 12 * 2000 * 2^y. After 10 years, the annual
revenue would $24,576,000. After 20, $25,165,824,000. After 30 years,
$25,769,803,776,000.

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kiba
After 30 years of growth, your company is the size of several countries, GDP-
wise.

Assuming zero inflation in our monetary supply and thus zero price inflation,
this is undoubtedly an unrealistic assumption.

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trevelyan
Sure growth has to slow eventually, but it isn't unrealistic for a successful
company to grow 100 percent per year for five years.

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waratuman
The use of "reality distortion field" is out of place here. It used to
highlight a difference in culture, but I see no "distortion field" here. It is
also applied something that has no standard. How old is a company before its
no longer considered a startup? Reality? What is reality in a startup anywhere
in the world?

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dspeyer
I wonder if some of these barriers could be dropped fairly easily. For
example, a few startups could get together and open source their legal
boilerplate.

