home » Why StartupNation.com matters

Why StartupNation.com matters

by Paula | 20 April 2009 | permalink | comments
Tags: decentralization, entrepreneurship
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Earlier this month, futurist Jamais Cascio posted an article at his Fast Company blog titled Resilience in the Face of Crisis: Why the Future Will Be Flexible:

What will a post-crash, truly 21st-century world look like? For people thinking about global systems (economic, environmental, and social) one idea stands out: resilience.

. . .

Resilient flexibility means avoiding situations where components of a system are "too big to fail" -- that is, where the failure of a single part can bring the whole thing crashing down. The alternative comes from the combination of diversity (lots of different parts), collaboration (able to work together), and decentralization (organized from the bottom-up). The result is a system that can more effectively respond to rapid changes in conditions, and including the unexpected loss of components.

. . .

One reason why the idea of resilience resonates with those of us engaged in foresight work is that, as troubling as it may be to contemplate, the current massive economic downturn is likely to be neither the only nor the biggest crisis we face over the next few decades. The need to shift quickly away from fossil fuels (for both environmental and supply reasons) may be as big a shock as today's "econalypse," and could easily be compounded by accelerating problems caused by global warming. Demographic issues--aging populations, migrants and refugees, and changing regional ethnic make-ups--loom large around the world, notably in China. Pandemics, resource collapse, even radically disruptive technologies all have the potential to cause global shake-ups on the scale of what we see today... and we may see all of these, and more, over the next 20 to 30 years.

(Emphasis added is mine.)

It's the first time I've seen the issue of resiliency put forth in a purely business context. Normally when I see the issue come up as related to business, it has to do with computer systems, not The Big Picture.

Those of us who have had resiliency on the brain recognize Cascio's description of the alternative immediately, highlighted above. It is precisely what the relocalization movement, the Transition Towns movement, the local foods movement, and similar efforts are working toward. My standing criticism of these is that they almost completely ignore the business realities that are inseparable from economic diversity, collaboration, and decentralization. This trinity is the spontaneous result of changes in business practices and structures, not vice versa.

Enter StartupNation.com. StartupNation (SuN) is the brainchild of San Francisco-based serial entrepreneur and venture capitalist Rich Sloan. The site's mission is to empower entrepreneurs at all stages of the startup process with information, community, and other pertinent resources. In the past year SuN's traffic has increased 184 per cent. People are flocking to SuN because they are afraid for their jobs (if they still have one), and self-employment is a viable option in an economy where jobs are evaporating at a frightening pace.

But what really interests me is that SuN is a central hub where all three alternatives to "too big to fail" systems -- diversity, collaboration, and decentralization -- come together and flourish. I think StartupNation is beyond the bleeding edge of economic reorganization. It's off in the as-yet-unconscious predecessor space of the bleeding edge. If this recession can be likened to a woodchipper shredding companies left and right, StartupNation is like the rain that turns the wood chips into rich soil. And soil is, after all, ultimately the basis of every economy.

Of special note is the annual Home-Based 100 Competition, in which home-based entrepreneurs are honored for their successes, innovations, ingenuity and tenacity. If memory serves, something like 5000 people entered the competition in 2008, only its second year. Contestants could enter in 10 different categories; and when judging time came around, the judges added another three honorary categories. It is hard to imagine more economic diversity, collaboration, and decentralization than this.

The conspiracy nut living in the back of my brain occasionally worries for Rich and the StartupNation team. It seems pretty obvious that the current economic meltdown is an engineered class warfare designed to redistribute wealth from everybody to a couple insane, power-addicted freaks. If StartupNation's enthusiasm for little-guy success were to go viral, the bailout redistribution would be brought to a screeching halt. As would all the various tax and legal structures that make such wealth redistribution possible in the first place. At its heart, and whether Rich & the team realize it or not, StartupNation is quite possibly the most subversive site on the web.

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