Marketers claim that the cultivated St. Valentine’s Day frenzy negatively influences the well-being of single people and thus is no longer relevant for modern society. With a public petition aimed to establish February 14 as Global Startups Day, the agency calls to recognise the input of the global community of technology creators, which still does not have its professional holiday. In fact, today the startup market generates 13–20% of the Global GDP.

In various parts of the world, February 14 is already unofficially celebrated as Geek Day. On this day in 1946, the world saw the first general-purpose computer named ENIAC (Electrical Numerical Integrator And Calculator), which later evolved into laptops, tablets, and smartphones. Moreover, February 14, 2005, is known as the birthday of YouTube, then a young startup, and an international corporation today worth over $180 billion in 2022.

St. Valentine’s Day, on the other hand, may be quite troublesome for some people’s mental health, irrespective if they are single or not. Still, single people may feel especially vulnerable and lonely on this day. Over the last 20 years the amount of people suffering from loneliness has sufficiently increased. According to the research by Meta-Gallup, covering 140 countries, one in four people consider themselves lonely, which corresponds to over 2 billion individuals.

The team of the agency, doing PR for tech companies, understands that the initiative to cancel St. Valentine’s Day may get a negative reaction, due to the strong public association of the holiday with romance and gifts. However, according to Czeslaw Smirnou, CEO of AROUND PR Studio: “This holiday has become outdated and is no longer  necessary for modern conscious couples, who do not need a special day to show their love and affection to their partner.”

The team of the agency calls for the global startup and tech community to join their votes to the petition and claim the right to the deserved professional holiday.