Is there a significant opportunity for non-English, non-US startups ?
Arguably, the valley firms have faster, better access to venture capital, created more value than in any other place in terms of market capitalization and benefit from close proximity to some of the world's largest established firms like Google, Cisco, Apple and Oracle, which were once startups themselves. This also translates into a self-replenishing and immense talent pool that reinforces the valley's lead in the global startup scene. But there are also impressive international success stories :
Mixi, the Japanese social networking phenomenon, was launched on February 2004, and went public on September 14 of this year in the Tokyo Stock Exchange. While neither its 5 million members nor its close to $1 billion market capitalization (as of September 2006) compare to US giants like Google, it was the number 3 site in Japan with about 7 billion monthly page views in September 2006. That's pretty impressive for a company that's only 19 months old. Baidu, recently chosen as the Best International Stock for 2007 by Motley Fool, was founded by Robin Li, formerly of Infoseek by 2000. It's currently valued at nearly $4 billion and remains the leading search site in China. Skype of course was the big European "Successful Exit" with its $ 4.1B sale to eBay in 2005. The list can be extended to many others like Israel-originated Mirabilis (creator of ICQ) which was acquired by AOL.
There are many other international startups in earlier stages working hard to differentiate themselves with unique ideas or useful features compared to their US counterparts. Newly renamed Xing (formerly OpenBC) for instance is trying to distinguish itself with the ability for each member to contact another directly as opposed to on LinkedIn which has been the leading business social network in the US. Xing is currently awaiting its IPO on the German and Swiss stock markets. Lokalisten.de from Germany is another social networking site building communities based on the same city (you actually have to choose a "home city" when you log in). Pikeo, a new photo-sharing site is available in Spanish and French besides English which as TechCrunch points out, might be a key feature onto itself as non-English speakers increasingly seem to prefer sites in their own language.
Being in Silicon Valley without a doubt constitutes a huge advantage for startups but that doesn't mean success can't come from outside of the US. It's exciting to see innovation proliferating globally.
