Can Asia really create the world’s next platform?

Asia’s startup ecosystem is in an existential crisis. It is decidedly one of the most significant continents in the world with the largest online user-base. It also hosts massive iconic companies. Samsung, Alibaba, Xiaomi, Nintendo, Sony, Huawei, and Baidu are a few that represent the vanguard of Asia’s tech manufacturing and software potential. But in terms of building platforms that dominate the world’s users like Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, and the many startups that have passed before like MySpace, Napster, Netscape, and more, Asian companies both small and large are still followers.

Thus, the overarching question here is, can Asian companies introduce the next system, platform, or app ecosystem? In this piece, we’ll explore what it has taken for individuals and companies in Silicon Valley to pull this off, and whether or not an Asian company can do it, too.

The creation of an operating system takes a super nerd and he/she needs to be nurtured

If you look at the history of every operating system that has reached widespread use (multi-millions of users) you’ll find a super nerd behind it. Not many people know this, but Microsoft didn’t produce DOS. In fact, Bill Gates licensed DOS to IBM before Microsoft even had the right to do so. Microsoft basically finagled the deal from Tim Paterson, who originally created it. Paterson later joined Microsoft for over 18 years but he even notes that:

I take great pride in having written what became, for quite a long time, the world’s most widely-used computer program. That it was so profitable for them is fine with me. Businesses always make money off of the work of their employees.

In other words, behind these groundbreaking technologies lies an engineer (or engineers) that is profoundly dedicated to the art and science of engineering. He/she is so focused on that aspect that even the business side is irrelevant. It takes a true hobbyist who cares more about computers than anything else, Steve Wozniack, Steve Jobs’ engineering whiz co-founder, was just that, as Walter Isaacson notes in the Jobs biography:

After work each day, Wozniak would go home for a TV dinner and then return to HP to moonlight on his computer… Because he could not afford to pay for computer time, he wrote the code by hand.

That’s dedication.

And although it’s likely that Asia has super nerds near or at the level of Wozniak or Paterson, are they given the space and environment to nurture themselves? Are they valued as highly as Woz was? Across Asia, it’s the businessman that is revered, not the technologist.

Building a new operating system takes an ecosystem of super nerds

But people like Wozniak and Paterson cannot be alone. They must be surrounded by an ecosystem of engineers that are at or near their level. This is especially true with Linux. Although Linus Torvalds originally pioneered the operating system, sharing it with the wider technical community was seminal. And by his own omission, Torvalds didn’t want to build it into a viable business.

… [T]he thing is, me trying to make a business around Linux would have been a total disaster. It would have made it impossible to get the kind of community around Linux that we have, and that was so instrumental in making Linux what it is today.

Building a new operating system takes serious balls

Most founders in Asia are not tech people, but business people dressed in tech clothes

Timing is everything

Is OTT really Asia’s saving grace?

The ecosystem just isn’t there yet