These startup camels offer businesses in all industries and sectors valuable lessons on how to survive through crisis, and to sustain and grow in adverse conditions, even if the metaphor isn’t as flashy. They survive and thrive in some of Earth’s harshest regions.

Camels are able to survive for long periods without sustenance, withstand the scorching desert heat, and adapt to extreme variations in climate. Instead of the unicorn, the camel is the more fitting mascot. The problem now, however, is that this growth-at-all-costs methodology, which the Valley’s top players are exceptionally good at, only works in the strongest bull markets, in the most optimal conditions.īut consider what I call the “Frontier”: those business ecosystems outside the Bay Area bubble, where startups have less access to capital or trained startup human capital, and where, especially in many emerging markets, they are more susceptible to severe and unpredictable macroeconomic shocks. Traditionally, this is done through rapid growth. The current situation is particularly difficult for Silicon Valley, where the predominant model is to raise unicorns – the colloquial reference to startups worth over a billion dollars. How can startups and innovators of all stripes survive in such conditions? Many are not prepared. In the wake of Covid-19, and the global recession it has caused, business leaders, innovators, entrepreneurs, and investors are all girding for a long period of extremely challenging conditions in the global market.

Into the land of unicorns pdf