“The Best Time to Start a Business is Now”

In 1982, in his mid-twenties, Andreas von Bechtholsheim and three fellow students from Stanford University founded the company “Sun Microsystems”, initially to produce more powerful and networked home computers. In the 1990s, the start-up then became known worldwide for developing Java technology and the programming language of the same name. In the years that followed, the German computer scientist joined Cisco (1996), invested in Google (1998) and founded the cloud provider Arista (2004).

For Andreas von Bechtholsheim, the core of entrepreneurial thinking is solving real-world problems through technological innovation. To be successful, founders needed to adopt a “problem-solving loop” and first achieve a “minimum viable product”: a product that is just good enough to use and that is further improved in cycles based on customer feedback.

Great success with innovative technologies

Only one percent of the high-grossing US start-ups are in the technology sector, but the world’s six most successful tech companies now each have revenues greater than the gross domestic product of Germany. Andreas von Bechtholsheim explains this success by the fact that the founders have used newly developed technologies to disrupt the status quo. It wasn't always the fastest that prevailed: for example, Google was not the first search engine start-up on the market, but it was able to beat its competitors within a very short time with an efficient method that could not be manipulated.

“In the next ten years, we will see more disruptive innovations than in the last 40 years,” said Andreas von Bechtholsheim. The speed at which new innovations are developed would not slow down. This would lead to more competition, attracting venture capital would become more difficult, and the cost of going public, particularly in the US, had risen sharply.

Universities provide a good environment for start-ups

Universities, in particular, were excellent starting points where teams of experts could be formed. However, the elite U.S. university of Stanford had many advantages in this area that could not be compared with other locations worldwide: its direct proximity to Silicon Valley, home to the world's largest tech companies, and to the largest venture capital investors, who specifically target students. At the same time, due to the history of successful start-ups at Stanford, students who want to establish their own company would often choose to come to Stanford deliberately. As a result, there was an atmosphere in which “the next big thing” would be thought about across campus and at any time.

Despite the many advantages in Silicon Valley, Andreas von Bechtolsheim also motivated new start-ups in Dortmund and the region. The costs for personnel and infrastructure were significantly lower in Europe than on the US West Coast, making it easier to get started. At the same time, he encouraged start-ups to approach customers in the USA with innovative products at an early stage in order to achieve rapid growth and benefit from the advantages of the American economy. With regard to difficult times, such as an impending recession, he emphasized that start-ups should take advantage of them. These times would also offer a number of advantages: there would be less competition, more talent would be available for hiring and a lot of time would pass between product development and market entry, meaning that an upturn could be expected again. The current cycle of disruptive innovations was still in its early stages – all entrepreneurial teams could use this to get a head start with their problem-solving ideas: “The best time to start a new business is now.”