There is a world full of startups out there, and you are missing it

When we started Geektime six years ago, we believed that people didn’t know the real story behind Israel. Way before the days of the Startup Nation book, even Israeli media outlets were hardly covering the local startup scene outside of big funding stories and huge exits. We believed that the local industry deserved a voice, someone to tell the story of how the startup nation came about, about small startups forging their own path and the new generation of founders leading the biggest and most innovative companies coming out of Israel.

Today, there isn’t a self-respecting media outlet in Israel that does not tell the startup story. Calcalist, TheMarker and Globes are writing about new startups every day, and the largest daily newspapers and prime time TV programs do features left and right about innovation and startups, not just significant exits. I am not here to take credit – I am just happy that Geektime had the opportunity to play a role in this shift of public consciousness.

The reason I am sharing this is that about a year ago, we realized that while the Israeli startup ecosystem has been very successful, it shares the same pain as the rest of the world located outside the bright and sunny spotlight of Silicon Valley.

Today, we know that the world has a lot more to offer than most of us realize.

You may be surprised to learn that 80% of the world’s startups are launched and based outside of Silicon Valley and New York City. However, it’s very easy to ignore them when everyone is so busy with the latest batch of YC companies, Uber’s controversies, and Facebook’s latest app.

Twenty percent of the companies (those who are Silicon Valley and NYC-based) are getting 95% of the mainstream tech media’s attention span and that, in our opinion, is a grave mistake.

Did you know that 7 out the 10 largest IPOs ever are not even from the U.S. and 6 of the 10 largest internet IPOs are non-U.S. based companies?

Did you know that until a couple of years ago, when the Silicon Valley gold rush of tech company valuations started, there were more billion dollar startups (AKA unicorns) based outside of Silicon Valley than in it?

Why did no one hear about Alibaba outside of China until it became 65% of Yahoo’s net worth, even though it was a unicorn with huge business outside of China five years before that happened?

Hundreds of thousands of new startups build awesome products, do great research and create amazing technology throughout the world. Yet no one hears about them because everyone is just too God damn busy with Apple’s amazingly high profits, Snapchat’s new feature, or Uber convertibles – glimpsing from current mainstream tech media headlines, this is what readers are bound to think the global startup ecosystem consists of.

It is a grave disservice to the world that readers miss out on groundbreaking solutions, enormous opportunities and most importantly, the true potential of the world outside of Silicon Valley.

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” ― Mahatma Gandhi

We want everyone to know about awesome new companies coming out of Talin (Estonia) and Montreal (Canada), promising and rising startups from France, Japan, Brazil and Abu-Dhabi (just to name a few), and amazing entrepreneurs from all over the globe that can and will be the change they want to see in the world.

We want investors to start seeing where groundbreaking innovation truly lies. We want them to start following the hidden money trail, and start helping the world realize our global startup ecosystem’s full potential.

This is why leading tech blogs from all over the globe, such as Tech.eu, Technode, TechInAsia, e27, BeSuccess,Bitspiration, Rude Baguette, iAfrikan, Novobrief and 33 others have joined our journey to show the international tech community that there is a whole world out there and it’s not new: You just didn’t know about it before.

That is why over 500 contributors from 81 countries are sharing stories about the ins and outs of their local startup scenes and industry insider perspectives so you can finally get the full picture, not just a partial one.

This is why Geektime.com launched late last year and has already become a leading global tech media outlet – and this why I am proud to be a part of the change I want to see in the world.

This post was originaly posted at Geektime.com