Entrepreneurs In This Part Of The World [Valley Or No-Valley]

A couple of weeks back we asked Sarah Lacy of  TechCrunch and Satish Dharmraj, a valley based Indie-American investor a simple question: “how far in the future do you see a global web company emanating out of Asia (NOT JUST INDIA). Is herding nature gonna bring out another bubble? “.

Satish’s overall answer was, uh, a plain no. He went on to explain about the eco-system in valley (which is true, coz a lot of talent from Asia flows there), available capital in the valley (that’s the ‘herding nature’ isn’t it?) and its culture of innovation (one can argue on this, coz a lot of innovation comes from outside the valley too!) and then he reassured that he does not see a billion dollar web or mobile company emanating out of Asia.

Well, let us accept it: Satish probably you are right about entrepreneurship in India. And probably Asia as a whole does not have a chance against the valley, even though the same Asians have all the possibilities when they go and do it from the valley. And that you’ve never heard of Asian entrepreneurs before, and you do not see anything remarkable happening in mobile space in India/China.

Let us believe that things are gonna stay status quo. Hell, you haven’t heard about our small blog called pluggd.in either!

But if I were to believe some of the awesome stories a couple of big-big ideas materializing into finished products & successful web/mobile startups coming out from India itself in the last four years, then guess what: valley-or no-valley struggle for me is immaterial from entrepreneurship point of view. Even the growth of readership of entrepreneurs on pluggd.in strongly indicates the prominence of startup momentum in this part of the world.

Look, look at the graph. Look at the numbers and then talk.

I mean, how far are we really from building a billion dollar web/mobile business? Is Asian entrepreneurship community so far from the biggest one of the silicon valley? How remotely is a typical Asian entrepreneur placed from elements of innovation? Or is it just as simple as getting our techie brothers back into Asia and then doing Dim-Dim and Google story from here itself? (BTW China is doing that already – getting their brothers back!)

Capital – ah that’s where the problem is and probably our regulations undo ourselves a bit too.

But saying that a billion dollar web or mobile enterprise cannot come out of Asia, IMHO, is radically flawed and little about living in a fools paradise forever. And dear investors, with all due respect, you are at least a 1000 feet above the ground. See just the entrepreneurship community of India is blip-ping on your graph already, despite the lack of capital, angel infrastructure, likes of Ron Conways & Marc Andresseens in this part of the world.

How long will it take for us to reach the tipping point? Time is the only gap between you and us. Keep running!

What’s your opinion entrepreneurs?

Your article is awesome. It will go out tomorrow without any editing.

Cheers,
Arvind

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