The world has changed dramatically since the first so-called startups emerged after World War II. At the time, the US was split between moms&pops businesses and the corporate world. It was within one of those corporations, Bell Labs, that a discovery called the transistor would change the world. However, during these first years of the birth of electronics, we still wouldn’t see “startups” per se. Many of these early electronic entrepreneurs started their companies as independent laboratories. Most would get a small location for tinkering part-time. Such was the case of Hewlett-Packard in 1938. Others would pitch their ‘labs’ to bigger corporations like Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory (1956), or Fairchild Semiconductors (1957), both divisions of larger companies. The de-facto term for these primigenial companies was ‘laboratory’ and not ‘startup.’ As the electronic industry evolved into semiconductors, more and more individuals started leaving their research positions at larger corporations. These people would then raise funds to begin a “startup” company in the “high-tech” field. This was a decade (1950s) of accelerated innovation fueled by post-war efforts. In 1957 the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik-1, the first man-made object to orbit Earth. The increasing paranoia with the Soviet Union’s technological advancements acted as an accelerant for intense investment from universities like Stanford and the Defense Department alike. In 1958 the US government created NASA and DARPA, which would effectively fuel most innovations in high-tech during the 1960s. The rapid pace needed to fuel defense projects like the guidance system for the Apollo program or the Minuteman missile project forced many of these semiconductor companies to ramp up production. Scaling high-tech at the time wasn’t easy. Every step was a struggle, and constant innovations were needed. This high-stakes, free-money, and quick-scaling environment produced a crop of business leaders, engineers, and investors that would define our notion of “startup.”

From chips to bits

In 1968, Gordon and Moore left Fairchild Semiconductors to start their own company, INTegrated ELectronics, aka Intel Corporation. Armed with their first microprocessor, the Intel 4004, they went on to fuel the rise of the personal computer during the 1970s. As computers became mainstream, so did the need to build software programs. The same ethos that drove the first Silicon Valley “labs” began permeating the new software startups. By then, investors had started poring into the valley, looking for new opportunities in the latest high-tech field. This migration was the genesis of a new type of investor, the “Ad-Venture Capital” investor, and heralded the modern Venture Capital industry. The decade of the 1960s became the origin of some of the most prominent Venture Capital firms of our age. Firms like Davis & Rock (1961), Sutter Hill Ventures (1968), Venrock (1969), Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (1972), or Sequoia Capital (1972) all got started within those years. They became the driving force that developed and fine-tuned the startup modus operandi that still operates today. Venture Capital took over most of the investments from the Department of Defense, becoming the “easy money” but retained the gusto for high stakes, fast returns.

The rise of the Internet Startup

As the industry developed new computers, new tools were required, and in 1986 the DARPA-funded computer network Arpanet opened its doors to several universities. By 1989 the first commercial internet service providers appeared, and the world changed again.

Computers could now speak to one another and access information miles away. In 1990 Berners-Lee developed the first suite of web tools and the first web server, propelling us into the Internet era.

Startups in “high-tech” began moving into this new space developing the two things they knew how to do best: semiconductors (Cisco Systems, 1986) and software (Netscape Communications, 1994).

As technology moved from physical (semiconductors) to digital (software), the barriers to entry began to decrease. With widespread computers and universities interconnected through Arpanet, a new wave of students learned how to code software faster than ever before. Innovation started to spread and the challenge of being in the right “lab” at the right moment began to fade. The pace of innovation accelerated dramatically, and the number of high-tech web-based companies reached a new record.

This dramatic shift got captured in a redefinition of what we understood by “startup.” Suddenly, the usual “high-stakes, easy-money, fast-scaling” took on a new meaning. With an ever-expanding pool of startups, cutting-edge innovation began to dilute and decrease. This change began shifting the notion that startups were always high-stakes. The other side of the coin was that investment in these types of startups became mainstream. The consequence was a sharp increase of less sophisticated investors playing the game, turning the “easy-money” into “super-easy-money.”

But these investors didn’t join just because it was easier to invest in startups. They got attracted by the unprecedented reach and scale these startups could achieve through the Internet.

And so, a new startup breed had appeared, the Internet “startup”; An incremental innovation, super easy money, an infinite scale company.