Marshall Islands is a nuclear spot on the stick chart map.
Marshall Islands were first populated by the Micronesians in the 2nd millennium BC. They were using the maps made from the wooden sticks. Utilizing this unsophisticated technology and driving their long canoes those courageous peoples gradually inhabited the area of about 180,000 square miles right in the midst of the Pacific Ocean.
In the following four thousands years the humanity has made the non-deniable progress from sticks and canoes to nuclear reactors and global wars. 1 March 1954 United States detonated the 15 megatons dry fuel hydrogen bomb in the atmosphere over the Bikini Atoll. It was one of the 67 tests produced by USA at its Pacific Providing Grounds facility located on Marshall Islands. Due to shifting winds in the area the subsequent radioactive contamination converted then some of local atolls into inhabitable zones for the next four millennium at least.
From 1956 to 1998 US (of which Marshall Islands is the Associated State) had payed to Marshall’s budget more than $700 million as the retribution for destroying a chunk of its territory and partially converting islands in one of the most undesirable places for international tourists in the Pacific area.
Some efforts have been made since to restore Marshall Islands’ ecological credibility including declaring the area for about 2 million square miles around islands as a shark sanctuary. However, those initiatives do not prevent specialists to question both Marshall’s government capacity to enforce those decrees and Humanity’s general ability to leave the self-destructive pass on which it has been set upon.
The Compact of Free Association with the United States which Marshallese government entered in 1986 (although now in a state of revision) provides US with an umbrella military control over those islands in an exchange for regular financial remittances to local budget (around $60 millions a year). This high degree of military and economic control which USA has over those Islands creates stable political and legal bases for local startups ecosystem.
However, Marshall Islands’ economy and its population are both too tiny to support inwards startup economy. The best opportunities which tech entrepreneurs have on this Pacific Archipelago are in global Fintech industry. Banking and finance sectors are both well developed on Islands which brings a professional industry expertise into the local startups scene.
At the same time, a virtual absence of seed and VC capitals makes any startup business model, which is not based on profitable, sustainable growth and unite economic modules, a near impossibility. On the other hand, virtual currencies, crowd-equities, electronic stock exchanges, e-financial advisory are some readily available startup options which local tech entrepreneurs may exploit.
Business Notes for Startups Founders:
- political climate: friendly;
- economic climate: moderately friendly;
- regions to focus: Oceania, USA, globally;
- industries to focus: Fintech;
- major limitations: geographical isolation, small population, absence of seed and VC capitals, low Internet penetration;
- opportunities: economic closeness to USA, low costs, financial industry expertise.