Silicon Valley is supposed to be a place where a couple of guys in a garage or a dorm room can start companies that change the world. It happened with Apple and Microsoft in the 1970s, AOL in the 1980s, Amazon, Yahoo, and Google in the 1990s, and Facebook in the 2000s.
But the 2010s seem to be suffering from a startup drought. People are still starting startups, of course. But the last really big tech startup success, Facebook, is 13 years old.
Until last year, Uber seemed destined to be Silicon Valley's newest technology giant. But now Uber's CEO has resigned in disgrace and the company's future is in doubt. Other technology companies launched in the past 10 years don't seem to be in the same league. Airbnb, the most valuable American tech startup after Uber, is worth $31 billion, about 7 percent of Facebook's value. Others — like Snap, Square, and Slack — are worth much less.
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