Startups-learning Scale From The Big Bang & The Idea Of The US

Our universe was created with Hydrogen and Helium (no prizes for guessing where they are located on the periodic table). That's all! Imagine all that we see around us and what we can't see in the dark recesses of our world has its origins in the 2H's. That is the power of chain creation i.e. a creation that can lead to other creations. This is how nature has perpetuated around us for billions of years post the big bang.

I believe it allows us to learn a very valuable lesson on scale and that is if we can really want to create scale then we can have to create something that other people can build on. Before the coming of the internet the truly scale models that existed in the world were "ideas" that created countries. The USA may be a country defined by its geographical boundaries but for me it is the most scalable idea that the world had post the industrial revolution. Let us examine this some more.

The influence of America is in its intangibles and that is why it leads the world. The way it talks, dresses, eats, educated and entertains itself. These have been used to by other countries to develop their own "way of life" but at its heart lies the American Dream of hope and positivity. This is the reason America has scaled, more as a concept than as a country as it could create the "intangible" that others could build open and so set up a chain creation model where one creation leads to another.

In the economic sphere, the industrial revolution leapfrogged us in the last 200 years in terms of being able to "do more in the same time" This is what we define as progress. However, its limitation was that it required form and so while companies expanded and incomes increased, there was no chain creation model of nature that got set up. This is why progress between 1800-2000 was fast as compared to 800-1800 but still "slow" if one looks at 2000-2015.

The beauty of the internet is that it allows ideas to set up a chain creation and still benefit the originator of the idea in a commercial manner. The fast scale companies of today are formless, Think Google, Facebook, Uber, Whatsapp, Twitter etc. They set up chain creation models as other use them as a base and create more on that very similar to how our universe has evolved. This is what is exciting about the times we live in, the digital world of zeros and ones can set up a perpetual scale cycle (remember Hydrogen and helium) of chain creation.

So for all those who are skeptical on startups/internet/e commerce and have strong opinions about valuations/boom /bust etc. let me say that we are starting to live in an era of perpetual scale and if you want to benefit from this then create something that others can create on. As soon as you draw a boundary around your creation (give it form) you have missed the essence of the internet.