The Rise of the Silicon Valley Small Business

Anu Atluru is a startup builder, angel investor, and frequent Every contributor who spent two years at Clubhouse as its first head of community. In this article, she explores the rise of a new type of company, one that merges big tech dreams with small business values. Check out Anu’s Substack for more of her work.

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We’re entering a new era in Silicon Valley, and the playbooks are changing. 

Many founders are rethinking what can feel like a one-size-fits-all, Silicon Valley approach to building startups. They’re embracing a more diverse set of paths and experimenting with a middle-ground approach—one that combines the fiscal discipline of small businesses with the scaling ambition of Silicon Valley.

I call this phenomenon the Silicon Valley Small Business, or SVSB for short. We’re going to see more SVSBs, and some of them will have big outcomes…perhaps even billion-dollar wins.

The archetypes