They're not copycats, they're smart iterators

By Timothy Motte

The Realistic Optimist is a newsletter publishing exclusive opinion pieces from VCs and founders around the world.

Author biography

Timothy Motte is the founder of The Realistic Optimist.

An ode to simplicity

Paul Graham, Y-Combinator’s founder, excels at simplicity. His essays are crisp, his sentences are short and his ideas are clear. A visit to YC’s FAQ page shows that his ethos irrigated the institution he created. Answers are crisp, sentences are short and ideas are clear. Despite the diversity of startups it deals with, YC seems obsessed with simplifying how it accompanies them. Consider this elegant business model categorization. 

Distilling complex ideas to the bare minimum is an underrated skill. In many cases, the simplification is rectifying unnecessary complexity (think financial jargon for simple concepts). In other cases, simplification is spotting what matters in a sea of mostly irrelevant information. 

Both paths achieve the same thing: the ability to clearly see what others can only slightly perceive. Seeing stuff clearly is essential to moving in the right direction and avoiding obstacles. It is the difference between crossing the street and getting hit by a car. 

Simplifying the global startup scene

In the past decade, tech startups have propped up around the world. At first sight, this trend seems awfully difficult to apprehend. Startups in Sudan, Estonia or Brazil can’t even be compared right? Surely, political, social, economic and cultural differences between countries demand a bespoke approach to startup building.

That supposed complexity hasn’t really materialized. The tech startup phenomenon has globalized with mundane predictability. Successful startups around the world strongly resemble each other. Shrewd investors are able to predict what startup will function in Geography A by looking at what has worked in Geography B. 

This isn’t surprising and boils down to a single fact: people’s needs are the same, regardless of where they live. So, logically, the services they need will be the same. 

It’s actually quite simple.

Smart iterators

Many successful startups in non-Western markets have embraced that concept. Copy what works abroad and tweak it to local market specificities. Until all successful Western startups have an equivalent in emerging markets (EMs), there’s space for that approach to work.