Page 64 - (DK) The Business Book

62
THE WEIGHTLESS START-UP
IN CONTEXT
FOCUS
Start-ups
KEY DATES
1923 Walt Disney starts
making professional cartoons
in his uncle Robert’s garage.
1976 The first 50 Apple
computers are built in the
spare room of Steve Jobs’s
parents’ house. A few months
later Apple moved “upscale”
to his parents’ garage.
1978 Indian master brewer
Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw founds
biotechnology company,
Biocon, in the garage of her
rented house in Bangalore,
India.
2004 Kevin Rose quits his
television job to found Digg, a
news aggregator website that
attracts 38 million users a
month during its peak. The
“office” is his bedroom.
IF YOU BELIEVE IN
SOMETHING, WORK
NIGHTS AND WEEKENDS—
IT WON’T FEEL LIKE WORK
tarting a business requires
almost boundless energy,
S unwavering commitment,
Many start-ups require skill, and the resilience to deal with risk.
not capital outlay.
But increasingly, the commercial
potential of the Internet is allowing
a growing number of “weightless”
start-ups to take flight. These
ventures are low on financial
resources, but high on individual
skill and the investment of time
to bring an idea to fruition.
In a weightless start-up,
the risk is time, Personal passion is an essential
not money. ingredient in a successful start-up.
As Kevin Rose, founder of Internet
start-ups Digg, Revision3, and Milk,
put it: “If you believe in something,
work nights and weekends—it
won’t feel like work.” Even global
greats such as Nestlé foods and
The work can be done Siemens electronics grew from the
initially on weekends and dreams and aspirations of a small
evenings, but...
group of people. These entrepreneurs
faced the risk of a new business
because they deeply believed in
something, and were driven to
realize their dream, despite long
hours, stress, and, often, a string
...if you believe in of failures large or small. These are
what you’re doing, quickly forgotten when people are
it won’t feel doing something they love.
like work. Traditionally, the main barriers
to enterprise were time and capital.
Entrepreneurs from nonwealthy