HOW STARTUPS ARE CHANGING

In the last decade, the term "Startups" has been used to describe small, up-and-coming businesses. The name describes what they that are in the initial stages of operation.

- Gabriel Pe

The term has entered popular media in recent years and more so during the pandemic. Shows like Shark Tank and Dragon's Den opened the public's eyes to businesses asking for venture capitalist funding to sustain or expand existing startup businesses. Add to that Netflix's highly-rated Korean drama Start-Up, which fed public curiosity about the nitty gritty lives of budding entrepreneurs looking for the next big thing.

But startup businesses have always been here. It has been a key concept of human enterprise since the very beginning and is continuously evolving.

A brief history and myth busting

To know how startups are changing, we first need to bust some misconceptions about the concept. At their very core, startups are small businesses. Lately, the term is commonly used to describe small tech companies catering to niche products or services.

While the term startup didn't make it to the general vocabulary until recently, the concept has existed since immemorial. From merchant trading posts in the medieval era to entrepreneurs starting small niche shops in cities during the industrial boom, these can all be considered startups. You can even argue that all the biggest companies now were, once upon a time, startups.

The more recent concept of a "startup" became prevalent in the late 1970s. Previously, starting a company meant starting from scratch, including finding capital. But beginning in the late 1970s, a new breed of entrepreneurs was able to tap into the resources of venture capitalists, or investors willing to provide the necessary capital in exchange for equity in a new company.

Many startups emerged from Northern California, wanting to get a foot into the booming tech industry. Fast forward some years, and Silicon Valley, California, became home to some of the world's biggest tech companies.