2 — How startups fail, learn and succeed
Nowadays innovation resides in vast startup ecosystems. It is within these networks of thousands of entrepreneurs launching new ventures every month that ideas circulate.
137,000 businesses give birth every day or 50 million per year, as established by Failory’s “ Ultimate Startup Failure Rate Report 2020”.
90% of startups eventually fail. If we do the maths 123,300 fail every day and, by the time you were reading up to here, 85 businesses were probably shut down (more about that at the end of this article, chapter 8 “Conclusion: Innovating in 2021”).
Nevertheless, countries that have been able to create vibrant startups ecosystems are home to amazing innovative companies, some of them reaching multibillion dollar valuations in less than a decade:
- Airbnb (founded in 2008) — $75 Billion valuation by December 16th 2020 / US
- SpaceX (founded in 2008) — $92 Billion valuation by December 15th 2020 / US
- N26 (founded in 2013) — $3.5 Billion valuation by November 25th 2020 / Germany
- TransferWise (founded in 2011) — $5 Billion valuation by July 2020 / UK
- Revolut (founded in 2015) — $5.5 Billion valuation by February 2020 / UK
- GuaHao, We Doctor in English (founded in 2010 ) — $10 Billon valuation by December 2020 / China
- Mirakl (founded in 2011 ) — +$1 Billion valuation by September 22nd 2020 / France
- ContentSquare (founded in 2012 ) — +$1 Billion valuation by May 2020 / France
- Jumia Group (founded in 2013 ) — $3.5 Billion valuation by December 17th 2020 / Nigeria
No one gets the single ownership of great new ideas and everyone within the network benefits from the success and failures of the others. A bad idea or a failing company is the seed for the next big thing more often than not. Think of Facebook, launched in 2004: this company certainly would not have been the behemoth it is right now if it hadn’t learned from now almost forgotten Friendster (2002), Habbo (2003), MyPlace (2003) or Hi5 (2004).
Despite COVID 19, 2020 has been a pretty busy year when it comes to startup IPO with companies such as Palantir, Snowflake, AirBnB and DoorDash leading the pack. But where and when did this new age of innovation start?
This Chapter is part of a series of 8 daily posts, if you liked it, thank you for sharing!
Here’s the table of upcoming daily contents:
1 — R&D is dead, long live innovation?
2 — How startups fail, learn and succeed
3 — Why Silicon Valley isn’t just one place anymore
4 — Is Huawei a design company?
5 — How SpaceX agile methodology gave birth to Starship
6 — About Xavier Niel, Ecole 42, Station F and Kima Ventures
7 — How Africa is becoming an innovation powerhouse
8 — Conclusion: Innovating in 2021
See you tomorrow!
