Last Tuesday morning, I departed Australia on a 14 hour flight to Los Angeles, followed by a 2 hour stop over before taking the final leg to San Francisco. Little did I know that we still had another 2 hours from San Francisco airport to finally arrive at our destination – Mountain View, CA. And it was well worth our wait.
It is now Monday, and since arriving, we have experienced a crash-course in the Mountain View / CA startup culture. Starting with TheStartupConference.com and expanding to visiting Google HQ, StartUp HQ (San Fran), & the recently opened home away from home for Aussie startups, StartUp house. And all throughout this, I was amazed by the lack of competitiveness that people express at least towards one another, and towards new ‘transients’ like us. It is really commendable. Our friendly hosts at ChezJJ explained this to us because Mountain View is “a bimodal town, people either tend to ‘zero’ or a very large number, very quickly”.
Despite peoples motivations for being open to collaboration and quick to help new people assimilate, there is so much for the world to take from this innovation explosion here then just the tech product outcomes. Investors working closely to product developers, product developers working collaboratively in ‘hackerspaces’, and hyper-networked individuals establishing enterprises aimed at facilitating and connecting all of this action.
Before leaving for the US, I had prepared myself for most startups having a very B2B or consumer focus. And don’t get me wrong, there is still a lot of this. But not nearly as much as I had prepared myself for, such as VC Tim Draper who seems quite keen for disruptive startups in the health and finance spaces. Also, startups like Andrew Watkins HealthDonor.com, a health crowd funding platform for those unable to receive health insurance and Tochi Yaber and Andote.com, a startup focusing on assisting people manage their prescriptive medications.
I am writing this article from Hacker Dojo - a two story collaborative tech and co-working workplace. And as I entered this morning, seeing everyone working diligently on their ideas, I couldn’t help but think, how do we mobilize and inspire such energy, ambition, and focus on issues of sustainable consumption? Space’s like The Hub Melbourne are breeding a new type of space like this, but there is something missing in between the product/outcome focus of Hacker Dojo and ‘the collective’ voices of The Hub Melbourne.
This leads to his final paragraph (of a short column)
…here’s a minor challenge. Unless you want to spend your valuable life painstakingly eking out barely better solutions to problems we’ve already solved which give us answers that fail to matter in the enduring terms of the questions which do, consider the following: If we’re going to reboot our institutions, rethink our way of work, life, and play, then what are we going to redesign them for?
Or, more sharply: what makes us human? One word, preferably.
So where does this really leave the current startup paradigm? Many of the successful Australian startups I have met, are focusing on B2B platforms aimed at improving organizational efficiency. I am yet to find someone to challenge efficacy, and provide the tools required around this.
I am begging to think that a fresh look at Social Return on Investment (SROI) metrics, combined with some interesting government policies and tax concessions could inspire a fresh wave of corporate investment in ‘social startups’. But perhaps it doesn’t need to be that complicated? But I am also likely to be bias because of our ambition around The Bridge Fellows and some resulting tech around this.
But, I think Umair hit the nail on the head, the next evolution of startups must address the fundamental question of ‘what does it mean to be human’? And I am confident they are coming…
Sunday, April 1, 2012
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