They are called “hubs”. Today, these centers that bring together tech companies and start-ups exist all over the world. For The Economist, Silicon Valley, California, no longer dominates this sector without sharing. In southern India, HSR – for Hosur-Sarjapur Road Layout – near Bangalore, for example, has become “the unicorn district” in just a few years. In 2011, 20 of the world’s 27 unicorns had their headquarters in the United States, notes the British magazine, while today the whole of the San Francisco Valley alone has 220 and half of the unicorns are found outside of the United States, spread across 45 countries. Moreover, the vast majority of venture capital invested in tech goes to companies that are not established in the United States. Among the new “hubs” are Beijing, London, Tel Aviv, Bangalore, Singapore and São Paulo. “Together, they are redrawing the map of global innovation, creating a map that is more dispersed, diverse and competitive”, highlighted The Economist.
Older hubs tend to spawn more business deep tech working in complex areas like artificial intelligence and other sophisticated software aimed primarily at businesses rather than consumers. The other hubs, particularly in Asia, generally address consumers more directly, in order to take advantage of a booming domestic market and apply to this market recipes that have already been proven elsewhere.
There are several factors that explain the rise of these cities:
- the existence of a growing domestic market;
- an increasingly strong local Internet penetration rate, thanks to broadband and mobile telephony;
- the availability of free or easily accessible programming tools and code to quickly start a business;
- the desire of American investment funds to diversify into other countries and the presence of local investment funds;
- the proximity of major universities specializing in tech;
- possible state support via contracts, for example.
In the coming years, predicts The Economist, Lagos, the commercial capital of Nigeria, could “to become the dominant player in the scene fintech African”, while Nassau, in the Bahamas, also seems to be doing well, especially with regard to cryptocurrencies, thanks to its very favorable regulation.