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I think it's really as simple as having a big company hitting a giant IPO that creates wealthy individuals who go on to invest in smaller up and coming startups
by pyrito 4y ago
I think it's really as simple as having a big company hitting a giant IPO that creates wealthy individuals who go on to invest in smaller up and coming startups. E.g. Seattle has Amazon and Microsoft, Bay Area has Meta, Google, etc.
- Camus134 4y agoMore importantly, the Bay Area has Stanford and Berkley pouring out new grads each year, a lot of them stick around.
- jeffbee 4y agoIf that were even remotely true then Silicon Valley would already be in Bentonville, Arkansas.
- pessimizer 4y agoThere are a ton of programmers in Bentonville, AR. I know some of them. The needs of Walmart are narrow, so it's not going to be the skunkworks-lousy valley, but for what Walmart does, it creates a community of IT contractors.
- jeffbee 4y agoThat's not what pyrito said, though. Pyrito claimed that the necessary and sufficient condition is a critical mass of rich people, a fairly doctrinaire application of "trickle down" economic theory. But we can see quite clearly that the Waltons, despite being fairly numerous, close in geographic proximity, and unbelievably rich, haven't triggered a Silicon Valley-like phenomenon.
- lotsofpulp 4y agoI would be surprised to learn the Waltons actually live and spend much of their time in Arkansas.
- jeffbee 4y agohttps://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-27/welcome-to-waltonville-where-the-world-s-richest-family-reigns https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-27/welcome-t...
- lotsofpulp 4y agoInteresting! I assumed the kids or at least grandkids would have moved out.
- gxiv 4y agoThis is what happened in Waterloo, Ontario with Blackberry. Of course the tech scene there is no where near as large as a SV and a couple others, but it's still weirdly big and concentrated given the size of the surrounding city. Every mid to large tech company in that area has a decent size cohort of ex-blackberry people.
- jeffbee 4y agoIs it possible that the cause and effect are reversed? I thought RIM was established in Waterloo because Waterloo was already by that time a Silicon-Valley-like (or at least Pittsburgh-like) tech hub.
- gxiv 4y agoThat could definitely be partly the case! After reconsidering it's definitely not fair to attribute the regions success entirely to RIM. It also probably has a lot to do with the University of Waterloo, which (being much more recently founded than other Canadian universities) has always had more forward thinking STEM programs and faculty, and also has much better IP protection for students than other schools in the area.