Independence, Innovation, and Disruption:
What Software Founders Can Learn from America's Independence Day
Today marks the 249th anniversary of American independence, a moment that fundamentally reshaped the relationship between power and innovation.
While John Cleese humorously dubbed it "Dependence Day" for Britain - acknowledging the empire's loss of its most profitable colony - the events of July 4th, 1776, offer profound insights for today's software founders navigating their own revolutionary landscapes.
The parallels between the American Revolution and the modern software industry run deeper than mere metaphor.
Both involve challenging established monopolies, creating new frameworks for governance and commerce, and ultimately redefining how power and value are distributed in society.
Understanding these historical patterns provides crucial insights for founders building companies that don't just create products, but reshape entire industries.
Source : NPR
The Monopoly Problem: When Incumbents Become Obstacles
The American colonies' grievances against Britain weren't merely about taxation - they were about a fundamental inability to innovate within a system designed to extract value rather than create it.
The Navigation Acts of the 1650s and subsequent trade restrictions created what economists would now recognise as a classic monopoly problem: the colonies could only trade with Britain, using British ships, and were prohibited from manufacturing goods that might compete with British industries.
This dynamic mirrors what software founders face today when confronting established tech giants.
Just as the colonies couldn't build their own manufacturing capabilities under British rule, many startups find themselves constrained by platform policies, API limitations, and ecosystem restrictions imposed by incumbent tech companies.
The insight here isn't that all large companies are inherently evil, but that systems designed primarily for extraction rather than innovation eventually create the conditions for their own disruption.
The tea tax that sparked the Boston Tea Party wasn't economically devastating - it was symbolically intolerable because it represented taxation without representation in the decision-making process.
Similarly, when platform companies change their terms of service, deprecate APIs, or adjust revenue sharing models without meaningful input from their developer communities, they're essentially imposing their own version of taxation without representation.
How to apply this today: When you're navigating ecosystems dominated by giants like Amazon, Google, or Microsoft, it’s essential to constantly ask: "What are the system’s limitations, and how can I solve them differently?" Understand where their extraction-driven models leave gaps - and then innovate in ways that the system can’t easily shut down.
The Network Effect of Revolutionary Ideas
The Declaration of Independence succeeded not because it was a perfect document, but because it articulated a vision that could scale across diverse communities with different interests.
The Continental Congress spent weeks debating and revising Jefferson's draft, removing passages that would have alienated potential allies while preserving the core revolutionary principles.
This process reveals a crucial insight about building movements around disruptive technologies.
The most successful software companies don't just build better products - they build better narratives that align the interests of multiple stakeholders.
Open source movements like Linux succeeded because they offered a compelling vision that aligned the interests of individual developers, corporations, and academic institutions, even when their specific motivations differed dramatically.
The American revolutionaries understood that their success depended on creating what network theorists now call "preferential attachment" - the tendency for new nodes to connect to already well-connected nodes in a network.
By positioning their cause as a fight for universal principles rather than narrow colonial interests, they attracted support from European intellectuals, foreign governments, and even some British politicians who saw the contradiction between Britain's imperial policies and Enlightenment ideals.
How to apply this today: Craft your startup’s narrative to align not just with your product’s benefits, but with the bigger picture. Tap into the passions of diverse stakeholders - whether it’s customers, contributors, or partners. The idea isn’t to make everyone happy, but to align your vision with their values. Create a compelling story that attracts more people into your orbit. This narrative will drive your network, and it will scale faster than any product alone.
The Persistence Paradox: Why Underdogs Win
The American Revolution should have been militarily impossible.
The British Empire had the world's most powerful navy, professional armies, and vastly superior resources.
Yet the colonists won through what military historians call "strategic persistence" - maintaining organised resistance long enough for their opponents' advantages to become disadvantages.
This dynamic appears repeatedly in the software industry.
Established companies often have superior resources, but they also have legacy systems, organisational inertia, and stakeholder expectations that make rapid adaptation difficult.
The insight for founders isn't that being small is inherently advantageous, but that sustained focus on a specific problem can eventually overcome resource disparities.
The Continental Army's strategy wasn't to win decisive battles - it was to avoid decisive losses while imposing costs on the British that eventually exceeded the value of maintaining control.
This mirrors how successful software companies often win not by building the best technology initially, but by building sustainable businesses that can iterate and improve faster than incumbents can adapt.
General Washington's famous retreat across the Delaware wasn't celebrated because it was militarily brilliant, but because it demonstrated the kind of strategic thinking that transforms disadvantages into advantages.
By choosing when and where to engage, the Continental Army forced the British to fight a different kind of war than they were prepared for.
How to apply this today: Focus on building something sustainable. Don’t expect to outspend or outmuscle incumbents. Instead, invest in solving one problem better than anyone else. Be relentlessly focused on iteration, customer feedback, and speed. Over time, those smaller, consistent wins will compound into something bigger than the competition can adapt to.
The Governance Innovation: Distributed Authority
Perhaps the most radical aspect of the American Revolution wasn't the decision to break from Britain, but the attempt to create a new form of governance that could scale across a continent.
The Articles of Confederation failed precisely because they didn't solve the fundamental problem of how to coordinate action across autonomous entities with different interests.
The Constitution that emerged from this failure offers crucial insights for software founders building distributed systems and decentralised organisations.
The framers understood that pure democracy doesn't scale, pure centralisation stifles innovation, and the challenge is creating mechanisms that can balance these competing needs dynamically.
The concept of federalism - dividing authority between national and state governments - parallels the architectural decisions that successful software companies make about centralisation versus decentralisation.
Too much centralisation creates bottlenecks and reduces adaptability.
Too much decentralisation creates coordination problems and inconsistent user experiences.
The founders' insight was that the question isn't whether to centralise or decentralise, but how to create systems that can dynamically adjust the balance based on changing circumstances.
This principle applies directly to software architecture, organisational design, and platform governance strategies.
How to apply this today: When designing your company’s culture or software architecture, focus on flexibility. Centralise where efficiency and control are necessary, and decentralise where creativity and agility are key. Build systems that can adjust to changing circumstances, just as the Constitution was designed to evolve over time.
The Economic Model Revolution: Creating Value Networks
The American Revolution wasn't just political - it was economic.
The colonists weren't simply rejecting British rule; they were rejecting an economic model based on resource extraction in favour of one based on value creation.
This shift from mercantilism to capitalism represents one of the most significant economic innovations in human history.
Software founders today face similar choices about economic models.
The traditional enterprise software model - selling licenses for proprietary systems - mirrors the mercantilist approach of extracting maximum value from controlled resources.
The open source model - giving away software to create network effects and monetising services - mirrors the capitalist insight that creating value for others is often the most sustainable way to capture value for yourself.
The insight here isn't that open source is always better than proprietary software, but that the most successful companies understand the difference between value creation and value extraction.
Companies that focus primarily on extraction may succeed in the short term, but they eventually create the conditions for their own disruption.
Source : Founding Fathers, Dirk Deklein.
The Communication Revolution: Publishing as Platform
The American Revolution succeeded partly because it coincided with a revolution in communication technology.
The printing press had existed for centuries, but by the 1770s, it had become cheap and accessible enough to enable rapid distribution of pamphlets, newspapers, and political tracts across the colonies.
Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" sold over 120,000 copies in three months - equivalent to roughly 3.2 million copies today - because it combined compelling content with an accessible distribution mechanism.
The pamphlet's success demonstrates how communication technologies can amplify ideas that might otherwise remain contained within elite circles.
This pattern repeats throughout the software industry.
Companies that understand how to leverage communication platforms to build communities around their products often succeed regardless of whether they have the best technology.
The insight isn't that marketing matters more than engineering, but that distribution is a form of engineering that deserves the same attention as product development.
The Long-Term Vision: Building for Centuries
The American founders explicitly designed their system to evolve over time.
The Constitution includes amendment mechanisms because they understood that no document could anticipate all future challenges.
This long-term thinking distinguished them from many revolutionary movements that focus on immediate problems without considering long-term sustainability.
Software founders face similar challenges when building companies that they hope will outlast specific technologies or market conditions.
The most successful companies build capabilities and cultures that can adapt to changing circumstances rather than optimizing for current market conditions.
The insight here is that sustainable competitive advantages come not from having the best current solution, but from building the best systems for discovering and implementing future solutions.
This requires balancing short-term execution with long-term capability building - a challenge that mirrors the founders' balance between immediate independence and long-term governance.
How to apply this today: Don’t just focus on building the best solution for today’s market conditions. Plan for long-term scalability by building flexible systems that can adapt as technology, markets, and customer needs evolve. This means focusing on building a sustainable company culture and infrastructure that can pivot, grow, and iterate over time.
The Collaboration Imperative: Unlikely Alliances
The American Revolution succeeded because it created alliances between groups that had previously been competitors or enemies.
Northern merchants, Southern planters, frontier settlers, and urban artisans had different economic interests, but they found common ground in opposition to British policies.
These alliances weren't based on shared interests - they were based on shared values and compatible visions of the future.
The insight for software founders is that the most powerful business alliances often come from finding alignment on principles rather than trying to align specific interests.
The Continental Congress worked because it created mechanisms for groups with different priorities to collaborate on shared objectives.
Similarly, successful software platforms create ecosystems where companies with different business models can all benefit from the platform's success.
Conclusion: The Revolutionary Mindset
The American Revolution offers software founders a framework for thinking about disruption that goes beyond simple competition.
It demonstrates that the most significant innovations often come from challenging the assumptions underlying entire systems rather than just building better products within existing frameworks.
The revolutionaries succeeded not because they were military geniuses or had superior resources, but because they understood that lasting change requires building new systems rather than just defeating old ones.
They created institutions, economic models, and governance structures that could evolve and adapt over time.
For software founders, the lesson isn't that revolution is always necessary or desirable, but that understanding the principles that enable successful systemic change provides crucial insights for building companies that don't just participate in markets, but help create them.
The Fourth of July represents more than American independence - it represents the possibility of creating new systems that better serve human needs than the ones they replace.
That possibility remains as relevant today as it was 249 years ago, whether you're building software in Silicon Valley or anywhere else in the world.
Source : Today in American History
References
Bailyn, Bernard. The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. Harvard University Press, 1967.
Wood, Gordon S. The Radicalism of the American Revolution. Vintage Books, 1991.
Paine, Thomas. Common Sense. 1776. (Sales figures from Foner, Eric. Tom Paine and Revolutionary America. Oxford University Press, 2005.)
Ferguson, Niall. Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order. Basic Books, 2003.
Christensen, Clayton M. The Innovator's Dilemma. Harvard Business Review Press, 1997.
Barabási, Albert-László. Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else. Basic Books, 2003.
McCullough, David. 1776. Simon & Schuster, 2005.
Ellis, Joseph J. Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation. Vintage Books, 2002.
Rakove, Jack N. Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution. Vintage Books, 1997.
Cleese, John. Reference to "Dependence Day" comment made during various British comedy performances and interviews regarding American Independence Day, though specific citation varies by performance.
✍️ Why I Wrote This
I’m endlessly fascinated by startups and the emotional rollercoaster that begins the moment a founder has that epiphany - the “aha!” moment 💡 where a problem grips them so tightly they feel compelled to solve it.
As a recovering Founder and Co-Founder myself - and someone who now supports startup founders and leadership teams across the globe 🌍 - I’ve seen something intriguing: the way a person approaches decision-making, risk, and intuition often varies dramatically depending on their age, experience, or both.
On this momentous day I felt compelled to research and understand what software founders can learn from the history, context, principles and outcomes of the United States of America being formed and breaking away from Great Britain. Always love the John Cleese of Monty Python fame, take on this day too 😂
To my pleasant surprise there are a number of parallels and learnings so please enjoy and reflect on this article. More on this soon.
What have you learnt from this article - what resonated and made you smile or frown?
👉 Is this your same take on the dynamics of the software industry today? Drop your views in the comments 👇
🎧 Let’s Stay Connected
If you enjoyed this piece, please subscribe here on SubStack and consider following my podcast, The G&T Sessions - where I dive deeper into the minds of remarkable founders, creators, and change makers.
🎙 Listen + subscribe → https://www.linktr.ee/thegtsessions
(For deeper dives into the psychology of founders.)
You can also follow me on X → https://www.x.com/andrewjturner
Ciao for now 👋
– Andrew