Entrepreneurs in the Ancient World: From Neolithic Fashion Tycoons to Babylon’s 'Silicon Valley' Startup Founders

Entrepreneurship didn’t begin with Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Thomas Edison, or Adam Smith. Depending on how one interprets the archeological record, it goes back at least 9,000 years, when Neolithic tribes set up bead-making factories to transform worthless stones into jewelry, trading them for raw materials.
This culture of business spread and grew more sophisticated. Four thousand years ago the first LLCs appeared in Mesopotamia. Entrepreneurs became a respected and important part of life, and a dynamic entrepreneurial culture that worked like Silicon Valley does today. To discuss this 10,000-year story of business is today’s guest, Derek Lidow, author of “The Entrepreneurs: The Relentless Quest for Value.” We delve into the deep history of innovation to deliver essential new insights into how entrepreneurs have created value throughout history and continue to bring about change.
We explore how the archeological record proves entrepreneurship eventually develops in all urban cultures, how some groups of entrepreneurs have been hidden from history (women, slaves, ethnic and religious minorities, the underclass, and immigrants), and how monopolists like J.P. Morgan or Mark Zuckerberg threaten this entrepreneurial spirit, and what can be done about it.

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