(2020-01-13) Perell The New American Dream

David Perell: The New American Dream. The Internet is a global talent show, and TikTok is the American Idol contest

today’s creatives learn by doing. They take action, improve their craft, and follow the incentives of the algorithm — the same attitude that drives entrepreneurs.

There are social, theoretical, and technological reasons for the coming entrepreneurship explosion.

Social:

Tyler Tringas said more explicitly: "The New American Dream is to build a profitable, sustainable, remote software business that can be run from anywhere, scales nicely, and prints money.”

Those who can start profitable businesses are showered with the praise of social applause, which is amplified for everybody to see on social media.

Technological:

Much of the knowledge that people used to need is now embedded in the software itself.

You no longer need to be an engineer to build a software-enabled business. I was able to teach more than 400 students in Write of Passage last year because of these tools. I run my live sessions on Zoom, integrate my APIs on Zapier, save my ideas in Evernote, host my curriculum on Teachable and my website on Squarespace, and communicate with you every Monday on ConvertKit.

Theoretical:

Investors like Fred Wilson and Marc Andreessen like to recommend a book called Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital. The author Carlota Perez studied the four major surges of technological development:

Today, we are moving into the “Deployment Age,”

Just as Perez’ theory predicts, the majority of companies in the coming entrepreneurship explosion will find markets with existing demand and serve them by integrating existing technologies. Crucially, entrepreneurs move away from risky exploratory projects and towards sustaining innovations with less technological volatility and fewer business failures.

These new companies will be built upon cheap software and founded in industries with low market risk. Thus, they’ll be mostly founded by bootstrappers. And those who raise capital won’t need much of it.