This Thanksgiving season, it might seem there’s less to be thankful for. One out of eleven of Americans is out of work. Many pundits say the American dream is dead and see further decline of the West, particularly the United States.
My prediction: this decade may well be our country’s finest hour, the beginning of an economic revolution as important as the scientific revolution in the 16th century and the industrial revolution in the 18th century.
This entrepreneurial revolution will permanently reshape business as we know it and, more importantly, change the quality of life for all who come after us.
Barriers to Entrepreneurship
Startups’ rate of innovation was once constrained by limitations we only now understand. Startups faced long development cycles, high development costs, staggering failure rates and slow technology adoption curves. What’s more, they lacked expertise on how to build startups. Nearly all the limits to startups and innovation have been removed. Starting now.
The time to build a first product release was once measured in months or even years. But today’s startups launch with a minimum feature set in the shortest period of time. Today, on the web, a first product can be shipped in weeks rather than years, and built for thousands rather than millions of dollars. Open source software has slashed development costs. The cost of getting the first Internet commerce product out the door has dropped by a factor of a 10 or more in the last decade.