a16z General Partner Anish Acharya Forecasts Imminent Unbundling of Silicon Valley

It’s hardly news that the fintech landscape is dramatically different now than in the heyday of the first pioneering Silicon Valley companies. The staggering proliferation of retail and business technologies the world over has transformed how companies do business. In fact, according to two leading voices from a16z (Andreessen Horowitz), in the near future fintech will have broken out of the limited geographic pockets like Silicon Valley for good.

While in previous decades capital and technology development were bundled into unique Silicon Valley corridors, for the first time ever, said a16z General Partner Anish Acharya, “You can really take all of these ideas outside of Silicon Valley. That just had never happened before because of the network effects component. Between people being distributed globally and COVID catalyzing this change, it does feel like Silicon Valley is becoming unbundled.”

There are clearly many reasons for fintech’s growth beyond one small window in California. However, the most immediate one may be the financial benefits of removing barriers to global implementation. Acharya went on to explain in the same interview that software already holds the potential for a day-one global launch, something highly prized by companies across the field. The problem standing in the way of a global launch is monetary, which is something that fintech clearly has great potential to solve.

“The idea now is that the company of the future, and the company of the present, will be global on Day One and the opportunity (for fintech companies) is to build all the infrastructure for that company to be able to operate and sell globally on Day One.”