Today is the US launch of Startup Century, a new (and debut) book by Balderton partner James Wise. The book’s subtitle provides a great clue to its content: why we’re all becoming entrepreneurs — and how to make it work for everyone.
This is neither a how-to book on building startups nor self-interested VC propaganda designed to foster more startup activity. More than anything, I’d say it’s a public policy book that includes a strong dose of technology history. The book is designed to help us first extrapolate possible future scenarios, and then select policies that drive us towards the more positive outcomes on the spectrum. The book doesn’t argue that society should trend towards entrepreneurialism, it presents a matter-of-fact case that it is doing so inexorably, for both better and worse. It then asks a series of “so what should we do about that” questions that take us into public policy.
Everyday-Everyone Entrepreneurship
The world envisioned is one of everyday-everyone entrepreneurship, which James defines as a state where people:
- Have meaningful ownership of what they produce.
- Earn in a proportional way to their (or their product’s) success.
- Can be self-directed, at least most of the time.
- Can choose how to solve a problem, and with whom to work to solve it.
What I like best about the book is that it doesn’t tap dance around difficult questions of societal structure and power, both past and future. You cannot discuss this kind of material without considering winners and losers. While the book certainly has an optimistic bent, it also provokes the reader to consider the alternatives. Excerpt:
“[Bloodworth’s] conclusion [in Hired] was that many of the rights and benefits the labor movements and trade unions had won, over several generations — from sick pay and holidays to maternity and paternity leave, pensions, and safe, civilized, working conditions — had been undermined, not by political opposition but by technological innovation and and ruthlessly demanding business models.”
For example, income security seems out the window in the eat-what-you-kill world of individual entrepreneurship. But was it already out the window anyway with the steady erosion of the social contract between employer and employee? And to the public policy angle, what should we, as a society, do about it?
Or, more topically, will AI create more jobs than it displaces — as James suggests and has been the historical pattern with new, disruptive technologies? Or will we eventually find ourselves in some more dystopian Logan’s Run type scenario?
After an in-depth review of several policy areas, the book concludes with An Entrepreneur’s Manifesto that offers sixteen specific policy suggestions grouped into three areas: find work, fair work, and fulfilling work. You can learn more about the manifesto by watching this lecture.
For more information on the book, you can read this Publisher’s Weekly review, peruse this Q&A with James, or even chat with the book.
My Overall Take
Overall, Startup Century is a worthy read — the history lessons alone are worth the price of admission. The public policy is less my passion, but the book nevertheless poses important policy questions and considers them in depth and with thoughtfulness that I have not previously encountered.
As James notes, “in his writings on capitalism, […] Schumpeter both championed capitalism and predicted its demise, […] warning that capitalism would inevitably morph into cronyism and give rise to oligopolies.”
Let us hope that everyday-everyone entrepreneurship can help prevent that demise and that we can collectively develop answers to James’ questions that lead us together, and successfully, into the startup century.
