![The Little Tech agenda](https://www.theblaze.com/media-library/the-little-tech-agenda.jpg?id=52670714&width=1245&height=700&quality=85&coordinates=0%2C110%2C0%2C111)
Suchat longthara/Getty Images
We believe bad government policies are now the number-one threat to Little Tech.
Little Tech is our term for tech startups, as contrasted to Big Tech incumbents.
Little Tech has run independent of politics for our entire careers. But as the old Soviet joke goes, “You may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you.”
We believe bad government policies are now the number-one threat to Little Tech.
When this cycle is allowed to play out, when big companies can weaponize the government against startups, the result is stagnation and then decline.
We believe American technology supremacy, and the critical role that Little Tech startups play in ensuring that supremacy, is a first-class political issue on par with any other. The time has come to stand up for Little Tech.
Our political efforts as a firm are entirely focused on defending Little Tech. We do not engage in political fights outside issues directly relevant to Little Tech. But we will fight for Little Tech — for the freedom to research, to invent, to create jobs, to build the future — with all of our resources.
We find there are three kinds of politicians:
We support or oppose politicians regardless of party and regardless of their positions on other issues.
We are in this for the long haul.
America led the 20th century because we are pre-eminent in three dimensions:
Each of these dimensions reinforces the other two:
And America’s success has positive global spillover effects to much of the rest of the world. American technology is the global standard. The American economy is the leading production and consumption partner of many other nations. And the American military has maintained overall global peace and prosperity since World War II to a level unprecedented in world history.
Naysayers say America’s best days are behind us, that the 21st century will see America play a diminished role in all three dimensions.
We disagree. There is no reason American technology, economic, and military leadership cannot continue for decades to come.
There is no reason the 21st century cannot be a second American Century.
American technology leadership is the result of a complex system built over the last 150 years that includes our pioneering spirit, our work ethic, our rule of law, our deep capital markets, our higher education system, and long-term government investment in scientific research. And university, government, and corporate labs have all played key roles.
But the vanguard of American technology supremacy has always been the startup. From Edison and Ford to Hughes and Lockheed to SpaceX and Tesla, the path to greatness starts in a garage.
A startup is what happens when a plucky group of outcasts and misfits come together with a dream, ambition, courage, and a particular set of skills — to build something new in the world, to build a product that will improve peoples’ lives, and to build a company that may go on to create many more new things in the future.
The enormous advantage of any startup is a clean sheet of paper — a single shot to imagine and realize a different and better world.
But startups start with every other disadvantage. Specifically, they must go up against incumbent companies that have overwhelmingly superior brands, market positions, customer bases, and financial strength — incumbents that are out to strangle startup competition in the cradle.
Incumbents often have another enormous advantage — the ability to wire the government against startup competitors.
Dominant companies don’t start out that way. In fact, they start as startups, fighting their way uphill until they reach a position of power where they seek to lock in their gains, to pull the rope ladder up behind them. They inject themselves into the political system and seek regulatory capture — a wall of laws and regulations that protect and entrench their positions and that new startups cannot possibly scale.
The historical result of regulatory capture in market after market has been government-enforced monopolies and cartels.
And the motto of every monopoly and cartel is, “We don’t care, because we don’t have to.”
When this cycle is allowed to play out, when big companies can weaponize the government against startups, the result is stagnation and then decline.
There are many signs of stagnation and decline in the American economy today.
Economists measure the rate of technology improvement in the economy as productivity growth. And productivity growth today, after 50 years of the proliferation of the profoundly powerful technologies of the computer and the internet, is lower than before the 1970s.
The real-world consequences are staggering:
The way to prevent this outcome is to encourage new startups — to drive innovation, competition, and growth — and to prevent big companies from weaponizing the government to crush them.
The American government is now far more hostile to new startups than it used to be.
For example:
The anti-startup bias that is increasingly pervasive across the American government is a clear and present threat to the health and vitality of American technology success — and therefore to the American economy, the American military, and the American people.
Why is this happening? In part, explicit decisions. In part, inertial drift. But also because tech startups as an industry do not show up in Washington, D.C., and in the political system the way big companies do. As long as this imbalance persists, the war on tech startups and the resulting threat to America will continue.
Therefore the need to politically defend Little Tech.
Reversing ruinous policies is just one side of the coin. We can also imagine positive policies that encourage tech startups to flourish — benefiting those startups and their customers and forcing big incumbents to stay vital and dynamic due to startup competition.
For example:
We have no doubt that an American government that actually wants startups to succeed and new industries to flourish would drive enormous increases in the standard of living of regular Americans and underwrite many more decades of American technology, economic, and military strength.
The glory of a second American Century is within our reach.
Let’s grasp it.
Editor's note: This article was originally posted as a thread on X.