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Can You Buy a Silicon Valley? Maybe.
- sachinag 18y agoI think even a million dollars per startup may be necessary but not sufficient. You also need a culture - funding 30 all at once provides some level of a community. That's well and good, but would the accountants and lawyers in that city be as good as the ones in the Valley? No. So that money goes back to the Valley, too. And they have a gravitational pull that would make it more likely that a company would go back. Not for sure, but more likely. So you'd have to make sure you had a rock-solid, streamlined process to make sure that the legal/accounting talent in the city (hell, white list them) knew the ins and outs of 83B elections, DE incorporation, how LLCs aren't appropriate for funded startups, and all that stuff that small business lawyers/accountants don't need, but are essential to not making it hard to get that 2nd round of VC funding. And then you'd have to have the press. TC, VB, CNet, and whoever else can actually drive "mainstream" pickup are located pretty much in either the Valley or (to a lesser extent) New York. So your costs of getting press or going to conferences to network/"run into" partners and VCs is higher too. Oh, and what about when the million dollars runs out? You need to have a local angel investor base that can give another million, or at least another half. People invest in what they know, for better or worse. And two hackers with laptops are going to be a lot more familiar in the Valley than anywhere else then you have to find a replacement for that infrastructure, as well - maybe you have to have the local business community have a co-investment fund or something. The point is, I don't think any amount of money can create a culture conducive to the information-enabled software/internet companies we're talking about that even begins to approximate the Valley. Sure it can be done from elsewhere, but it's twice as hard. First thing JamLegend did when it finished the LaunchBox program was move west - and they had an awesome product with tons of favorable press. (The only counter I can think of is TipJoy, who moved east - but only after they presented to 30 angel groups out west who said no.[1]) As to a specific city I know well, I've been very vocal - there's no better place on earth to bootstrap an internet/software company than Chicago, but you'd be hard-pressed to find a city that's worse to try to raise funds in. (There are many that are as bad, but worse is a small set.) And if there aren't those support structures, then the founders will take their laptops and move west. Money alone can't solve that. [1] http://www.masshightech.com/stories/2008/09/08/weekly7-Y-Combinators-firms-mostly-heed-go-West-advice.html http://www.masshightech.com/stories/2008/09/08/weekly7-Y-Com...
- jibiki 18y agoOddly enough, Chicago (or, rather, Evanston,) already has "a first-rate university in a place where rich people want to live." (At least, for some definition of first-rate.)
- sachinag 18y agoThere's also the University of Chicago (clearly world class) and a raft of other institutions - DePaul, UIC, Loyola, Chicago State, and IIT. And everyone who went to a Big Ten school ends up here for a short period of time. (Plus, we have a bar for pretty much every Division I-A school in the country.) Chicago has no trouble being attractive to young talent, and it's cheap, too.
- noonespecial 18y agoChicago has no "space in the margins". http://www.paulgraham.com/marginal.html http://www.paulgraham.com/marginal.html All of the space that could be in this category is rendered unusable 9 months per year by the winters there. When you're on the ramen budget, I think climate is more important than most people realize. Enclosed temperature controlled space is brutally expensive even in the "cheapest" cities. I find that even when the space is afforded, being trapped in cars and buildings many months per year because it literally hurts to go outside has a huge impact on my productivity.
- Agathos 18y agoCompared to California, not so good. But heating is a lot cheaper in Chicago than in Boston, because the housing stock is newer and has some insulation.
- RobGR 18y agoThanks for posting the link to that essay, it's one of PG's that I missed and I enjoyed it. I like the observation that marginal space matters. That is one of the reasons why I left the Boston area, after staying there a while after school. I would add that other factors include "marginal time" and "marginal income" -- places where people work 80 hours a week, and places where rent is half your income and no one saves any money, are also unlikely to produce revolutionary startups. You can heat a leaky garage in Chicago for less than it takes to rent a garage in balmy California. You will probably have to spend $100 on insulation -- get the rolls encased in plastic by Johns Manfield so you don't fill your workspace with itchy fibers -- and you will still have to wear a sweater in there. The garage door itself will basically be a seive, but there is this blue colored, flexible foam sheet product, that they use as a house wrap like Tyvek, that you can staple over it on the inside. If you really want to do a startup, a Chicago garage can be made "good enough". Or better yet, if your startup does not involve hardware assembly, just rent a 3 bedroom house in some other part of the country for the cost of renting a garage California, and work inside.
- Hexstream 18y agoTypos: Goverment, tradional.
- cperciva 18y agoIt would be pretty straightforward to make a list of the most eminent Silicon Valley angels and from that to generate a list of all the startups they'd invested in. If a city offered these companies a million dollars each to move, a lot of the earlier stage ones would probably take it. This seems like a highly effective way to kill startups. Never mind the whole "moving to a different city where you won't have many contacts" bit -- if a startup is still small enough to be able to move easily, throwing a million dollars at them is likely to give them too much of a runway.
- euccastro 18y agoThe "not many contacts" part is addressed, according to the OP, by moving no less than ~30 startups in one batch.
- sgman 18y agoThe question is: is there something in silicon valley that makes startups more successful here? If there is, then the companies you fund will be working against competitors that have a significant advantage over them. I don't think a sample size of 30 is large enough to answer this question one way or the other. Therefore, while the initial prototype requires minimum investment, it likely will not give you the information you need to decide whether to continue with the program or not.
- pg 18y agoThere definitely is. The question is whether a free million dollars would be enough to compensate or not. It's interesting we're even unsure of that. It means we're at least considering the possibility that merely being in the Valley is worth a million dollars to an early stage startup.
- cperciva 18y agoIt means we're at least considering the possibility that merely being in the Valley is worth a million dollars to an early stage startup. Close, but not quite -- we're considering whether staying in the Valley is worth a million dollars. It might be that being in the Valley is worth far less than staying in the Valley simply because moving sucks so much... even if you're not "tied down", it's still a couple weeks of packing/travelling/looking for an apartment/unpacking/figuring out your way around a new city/etc which could be spent coding.
- thingsilearned 18y agoGreat insights as usual PG. We're dealing with an investment group that has this (in a much much smaller scale) in mind. My major concern for them is that I'm not so sure it can be done on a smaller scale. Do you think cities can do a small version of this and become not the next Silicon Valley but at least startup friendly?
- mattj 18y agoI think access to capital is the first step, but access to employees is what would present the larger challenge. Sure, you could get a hundred or so new grads from your university every year, but how many hackers migrate to the bay every year? What's the turnover rate? If you have a million in funding, you're probably going to want to hire some people to help you (you have enough money to shoot for the stars; moreover, ramen profitability seems both a waste and unable to recoup the investor's money). Hiring good people outside of SV, especially if you want to use interesting (read not java / ms) tools, is going to be a bit more of a challenge. Especially if there are 30 other startups in the area trying to do the exact same thing.
- alain94040 18y agoGood point. One of the things I love in Silicon Valley is that I can hire any profile I want. If my dream candidate must have worked 5 years at Google on search and then two years at Salesforce because that's what I need, I know there is someone out there that fits that criteria. You can't replicate any of that stuff anywhere else. By definition, if you want to compete with Silicon Valley, you will want to hire some people from your competitors. So you have to be here as well. QED (any way around this dilemma, I'd love to hear). You can refer to an article I wrote last year called "The limits of the Silicon Valley model". Unfortunately, it was in print only for an Indian magazine, I can't find a link to it.
- s_baar 18y agoI'm suspicious of the claim that there can be more than one silicon valley. With founders being more mobile and VC in... shrinkage (less willing to take risks setting up in new markets), the likelihood of any such concerted effort being possible is nil. After all, you're not going to get anyone outside the organizers to move from the valley in significant numbers, so I think the prospects for natural growth is limited. I suppose what you say is true, but I don't see any reason to think such a transplant would ever outstrip the size/clout of the valley. And that's what it comes down to, is that with the big players already entrenched, and the weather so nice, no city will come close, even if the transplants do prove a boon.
- pg 18y agoI agree with you. I just wanted to consider what would be the optimal way to jumpstart a competitor. The chance of any city actually carrying out the plan I suggested is microscopic. Which is itself an interesting point, because it shows how unlikely the Valley is to face significant competition in the foreseeable future.
- alain94040 18y agoGreat article. But the fallacy in the comments is that most thought about domestic competitors only. As an example, the French community in Silicon Valley has been wondering for years how to get Paris (or some other city) to start resembling Silicon Valley more. Many French politicians visit for a week and always ask that same question. There could be a critical mass of French people living in Silicon Valley who would love to spend more time in Paris to advise and help the local startup scene, plus some political will to make something happen. Plus some rich American angels would love some special angel visa that would allow them to skip the lines at le Louvre :-) But this plan doesn't address the general lack of positive thinking in Paris. As we (the French living here) often conclude, there is a reason we moved out...
- listic 18y agoSure! Being non-American I read this essay this way too: Can you buy a Silicon Valley if you're not in US? There's little friction in moving to Silicon Valley if you're in the US, but much if you're outside of US.
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- jacoblyles 18y agoThe public generally looks askance at public funds being used for private benefits. Publicly funded incentives often are used to lure large corporate manufacturing facilities into town, but these generally are already very large and looking to employ thousands of locals. It would be a hard sell to convince the voters that you should give $1 million of their money to three guys with some laptops that weren't planning to hire any more people for the next few years.
- timf 18y agoAgreed it would be hard to sell to the public. Perhaps if the following point could be more visceral: "$1B invested in 50,000 startups would conservatively create 250,000 jobs immediately. If just 2% of those startups became wildly successful they would create 3 million to 5 million jobs." http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=497559 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=497559
- jacoblyles 18y agoSure. You could make numbers up and hope they are true. Just be sure the homeless shelters are well-funded for when the money runs out.
- timf 18y agoWouldn't you say the same thing for any public funding of private ventures, why does the volume matter? I don't support the government-as-vc idea myself but not because of any job projection numbers (real or made up). I think science and technology funding like NSF is a better way for the government to get involved in long term value/wealth/job creation in this country. The outcomes of the efforts can be more easily shared by the shared public money put in, seems more ethical to me.
- jacoblyles 18y agoI think inviting 250,000 people to your city with three months of funding is going to have lots of unplanned side effects, many of which will occur three months after the initial funding date.
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- albertsun 18y agoI think you're underestimating the difficulty of creating vibrant neighborhoods that smart young people want to live in. Merely transporting 30 startups worth of people into a new city wouldn't create that kind of environment if it didn't already exist. You need the artists and chefs and shop owners and activists that make up the rest of the community in order to create the right kind of community. Of the two example cities, Portland could probably very easily become a startup hub without this plan to push it, whereas Detroit would probably fail at it, even with this plan.
- timf 18y agoI thought the second to last paragraph said something much like what you are saying: "It will be easier in proportion to..." (although I am saddened by the weather part, being in Madison, WI where we have an emphatic yes to the other criteria)
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- prakash 18y agoWufoo seem to have rooted themselves in Tampa on $118k, but they're an extreme case. How would the evolution of Wufoo differ if they had be in the valley instead of Tampa?
- pg 18y agoThey may actually have been better off in Tampa. They've ended up slowly and gradually creating something really excellent, and that suits their personalities very well. But they are unusual people (in a good way).
- cperciva 18y agoCan you elaborate on this? It sounds very similar to something I was saying about tarsnap recently -- that if I had been in San Francisco, I'd have launched tarsnap twice as fast and it would be half as good as a result; and that being in Vancouver gave me enough distance from the startup world that I could avoid getting carried away with hype -- but I might be reading more into your comment than is really there.
- herdrick 18y agoI think by the time the Wufooers moved back to Tampa they knew more about doing a startup than you do. That's partly due to their YC experience and partly because they really know and obsess about design and user experience. (There's a lot of overlap there.) Spending time around people in Silicon Valley who talk about those two things a lot would help you in that department. And promotion. And marketing. Maybe you shouldn't listen to me since I've recently failed. But please do change some things you are doing, at least in the design area. I'd like to see you do well.
- herdrick 18y agoI know I'm judging your private beta product by its public face. But statements like this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=360561 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=360561 are also worrisome. UI and promotion aren't easy, nor 'easy'. They are hard and a lot of work. (Boy, telling a Putnam winner he doesn't know enough about something makes you choose your words carefully. And then it makes you wonder why you don't always do that.)
- ssanders82 18y agoWho thinks Paul Graham's essays have jumped the shark? (I'm aware this will not be a popular opinion on this site.) Raise your hand and I will elaborate.
- pg 18y agoSure, I'd be curious to hear why you think so. I'd be interested to see how it compares to the other explanations I've heard of this perennial phenomenon.
- Zak 18y agoElaborate first, else your post is merely a "vote up if..." type post that adds nothing useful to the discussion.
- slvn 18y agojust maybe
- pbrown 18y agoTangent: "Startup founders are mostly hackers, and hackers are much more constrained by gentlemen's agreements than regulations. If they shake your hand on a promise, they'll keep it. But show them a lock and their first thought is how to pick it." I love this quote, and agree wholeheartedly. Hackers are typically some of the most honorable people I know, and when they say something, they mean it. Likewise, they're some of the most ingenious people I know. When it comes to taking something apart or putting it together, hackers can usually do it.
- shalmanese 18y agoI think the way to do it is not to compete with silicon valley directly but follow the path of Singapore and they caymans in betting big on a niche. Rather than trying to be the best at everything like SV is, aim to be truly world class in just a few areas. I think there's probably a dozen cities in the world that could be world leaders in cloud computing simply by offering great deals on data centers as long as research and development work is also being done there. A city could leap to world class status for mobile/location based services by offering to buy every citizen a smartphone and then inviting startups to come experiment. Really, cities sho:ld take the exact same advice startups take: find a niche and serve it well rather than trying to crack the mass market with some luke warm offering.
- pg 18y agoThe Valley itself started out working on what was initially a fairly small niche. And whatever displaces it will probably do the same. But to do this deliberately, the city would have to pick the niche that's going to explode, and that would be really hard. The Valley didn't pick semiconductors; more like the other way around.
- russell 18y agoSome of the niches have gigantic potential. Iceland and California should have a huge lead in geothermal. Germany has a couple of leading companies in solar panels. Denmark in wind. China is at the top of the list in coal pollution; solving that puts them at the head of the class in clean coal. Twenty-first century manufacturing is up for grabs; MI and PA should be in the running.
- davidw 18y agoMy guess is that the way to get the rich, angel people somewhere else is to offer a better environment than SV, in the literal sense of the term. It seems, for instance, that Boulder has attracted a fair amount of angels, startups and the like, despite (or maybe because of) being a fairly small town in proportion to the bay area. For instance, if I made a pile of money, I would not live in the bay area (I don't live there anyway, so maybe I won't make a pile of money, either:-). After all, rich or not, stuck in traffic on 101 is stuck in traffic on 101.
- onetime 18y agoHonestly, Silicon Valley has one killer asset that is hard to match. Hot, smart, friendly Asian women.
- jleyank 18y agoI did a quick skim, but I didn't see any mention of the laws of the state for things like IP, employee mobility, etc. As I recall, MA is rather restrictive and so things like non-compete clauses have some meaning there. CA, on the other hand, ignores such things. I would think that the "business environment" is critical - too pro-management and the workers won't go and take their risks in that environment. The comment re: NC/RTP is spot on. The natives are content, slow-going folks. The imports are more active, but the slow-n-easy environment probably slows them down eventually. The triangle's a bubble in the midst of a lot of farmers...
- euccastro 18y agoMeta: You've written quite a bit about what would it take to replicate a Silicon Valley. Is that merely an exercise to try and better understand startup ecosystems, or have you actually been asked for this kind of advice (by governmental institutions, I presume)?
- pg 18y agoMostly I think about it as an abstract exercise, but we've had people from two European countries (Switzerland and Sweden) visit YC to learn about what we were doing. I had very interesting conversations with them.
- thaumaturgy 18y agoThank you for writing this. I've been putting some considerable energy lately into trying to grow a startup culture in my area (Grass Valley, Sierra Foothills) out of thin air. To date that has involved launching a co-working space, founding a "solopreneurs" organization, and beginning to pitch the benefits of startup culture to local investors and shakers/movers. I'm not looking to compete with Silicon Valley -- for reasons that you and others have pointed out, I don't think that's possible -- but I do think that we can create our own unique version of it. We're geographically isolated by two small arterial highways, there is a lot of scenic beauty and outdoor activities, and there is a strong push to localize products and services. There's also a healthy respect for technology here -- Atari was a prominent figure here back in its early days, Grass Valley Group engineers top-of-the-line video equipment, Spectrum Sensors & Controls builds various motors and potentiometers for government and high-tech applications, and the local cities are keen to attract more high-tech companies. For those reasons and others, I think there's a chance of incubating a small but successful startup environment here. So although on the face of it what you wrote would suggest that it can't be done here, I think it also indirectly provides some support for it.
- fauigerzigerk 18y agoThe idea is certainly worth trying, but I fear where this falls down is the most important kind of funding, which is publicity. Tech media, bloggers and so on, they're all in the Valley, and they are very narrowly focused on local startups. They will hype the startups next door relentlessly and mostly ignore everyone else. Sometimes they will even ridicule or actively bully outsiders as astute techcrunch readers will have noticed. Startup culture takes more than startups I'm afraid, but startups are certainly a start, so why not try?
- jacoblyles 18y agoEven if it were possible, I still don't think it a good idea. That money has to come from somewhere, and it comes from the bank accounts of people that planned to use it on something other than investing in startups. There's nothing that startups add to a community that I think is a priori better than other things that a community of people would have chosen voluntarily to spend its money on. Some places fund startups, some don't. That's what comes from having free will and individual liberty. Other people may make different choices than we would, but it doesn't follow that we should force them to be like us. I suggest we should respect other peoples' autonomy. It has long been the credo of the social planner that the common man is too stupid and too provincial to pursue his own happiness, and that he should be cajoled into doing what is good for him. That credo has been the prelude to a lot of well-intentioned misery. I understand that there are things which are "public goods" which we may wisely choose to produce with public dollars, but investing in private businesses doesn't strike me as one of those public goods. I don't see the social value in taking a lot of money from private folks to spread a concentration of startups more evenly over the landscape. I understand that Paul is pondering what can be done and not what ought to be done. I just don't think it is a good idea. If I want to live in an area with lots of startups, I'll move to Silicon Valley where people have voluntarily chosen to fund them. Finally, Paul states that this is a good idea because municipalities already waste a lot of money on projects of dubious value, such as baseball stadiums. That's true, but it doesn't follow that those municipalities should spend that money on other projects of dubious value. Another response would be that they should leave people and their money alone.
- michaelkeenan 18y agoThough PG specifically mentioned politics, I took away the message that any person or group with $30 million could do it, if they wanted. Is it likely that someone cares enough about a specific place to to altruistically transform it into Silicon Valley? Probably not (maybe in a seasteading future?), but nor is this politically feasible. So, it's just fun to think about.
- pg 18y agoThat is a very interesting idea. I didn't think of that. You could do the 30-startup experiment with private money. And what pressure it would put on the city if it succeeded. Thanks for this idea. I just added a paragraph to the essay mentioning it.
- trevelyan 18y agoGive more money to the VC industry in California because they're the only players capable of picking winners? Where is the evidence the VC industry in California is even competent? From the outside California looks like its waking up from a ten-plus year orgy of mal-investment enabled by a mountain of easy credit driven by irrational international capital flows. I understand that Paul's role is encouraging investment, but this is disastrous advice for cities. Give away a million bucks? Talk about welfare capitalism. A much better approach would be a matching funds program for local ventures.
- pg 18y agoWhere is the evidence the VC industry in California is even competent? All around you. The cpu of the computer you used to make this comment, and the routers by which it got here, to start with.
- trevelyan 18y agoNeither the CPU nor the router were invented in the last 10 years Paul, and the retreat to hardware makes for a weak case since new FABs are generally financed by banks and corporate bonds rather than venture capital. Neither my router nor CPU were produced in the United States, although that is beside the point. My point was that IPO and M&A activity are highly correlated with stock market performance. I can't run a regression analysis linking exit opportunities to international capital flows because there are no statistics on international investment in US stock markets, but it hardly seems radical to point out that the VC boom of recent years has been fueled significantly by the stock market boom. If strategic investment decisions were the primary driving force behind the success of the industry the industry should not be facing such a bad liquidity crisis right now. And perhaps this is harsh, but I don't see a lot of competence in the investment decisions which have been made in my own industry so I find your argument unconvincing. A lot of startups are competing against other startups and most funded companies in my space are disasters. But they all love AdSense, which means that as these companies flame out my ad-spend is going down and life is getting much nicer. Your suggestion that public policy should involving giving significant sums of money no-strings-attached to groups that seem responsible for major capital misallocation and band-wagon investment behavior seems beyond unjust. It seems crazy.
- leelin 18y agoInteresting timing for the essay, since starting March 1st New York City seems to be attempting this exact experiment (I know there is already at least one HN thread post about it already). http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/19/nyregion/19bankers.html http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/19/nyregion/19bankers.html To be fair, convincing laid-off quants to stay in the city and form startups isn't quite the same as trying to get SV #2. The city probably wouldn't mind falling into PG's footnote #1 trap, because in the worst case the program would be an alternative to paying unemployment benefits with a free option should someone hit a jackpot.
- pchristensen 18y ago"It depends what your city values. If what you want is football, spend the money on the stadium." I loved the essay, but this line alone was worth the time it took to read it!
- pg 18y agoOops, just deleted it.
- gcheong 18y agoI can't think of a single major US city (san francisco bay area included) that, if it came to a popular vote, would likely choose the start-up fund over a stadium.
- budu3 18y agoI agree with you. Selling the idea of a billion dollar startup mecca to their constituents would be a though sell for any politician.
- netcan 18y ago"Rent Seeking" Say this works out in a big way & 2-3 cities take up this $30m challenge. The essay suggests $1m to move a startup, which suggests that having a startup in your city is worth (more then) a million. Why not offer them a million to stay (or half a million if they'll take it)? What if the cities start bidding against each-other for the 'best' startups (assuming they end up with some mechanism for choosing the best ones). What if start-ups form specifically to take advantage of this scheme? What if angels/VCs that happen to rank highly on this list have all their investments get poached & presenting it as a benefit of taking their 1/4 million? The perverse incentives, gaming & such might make this impossible to implement as a large scale government/municipal scheme.
- pg 18y agoPicking startups based on the investments of eminent angels would protect against most gaming. They're not going to change their investment criteria based on what's happening downstream of them.
- yummyfajitas 18y agoThe ability to get government funding increases the success probability of various startups. What happens downstream will affect success rates. I.e., if flagsfororphans.com goes well, VC's win. If it gets into trouble, the possibility of future government funding may let the VC's recoup some of their investment. This makes VC's prefer flagsfororphans.com to satanictitleinsurance.com, which obviously does not have the same possibility of government funding.
- brucehoult 18y agoEvery time you write an essay on this general topic I sit here wondering: Has he looked at Wellington, New Zealand? Beautiful city that people want to live in, lots of people living downtown, good university, a community with several very successful technology companies that are a source of angel investors and advisors e.g. Weta Digital (Lord of the Rings etc) and TradeMe (online auction site that beat eBay in NZ and sold for $750m).
- Dilpil 18y agoMoving to new Zealand is a pretty big deal.
- xenoterracide 18y ago@detroit HEY!! no you're totally right except detroit is right next to Ann Arbor, which is actually one of the bigger tech startup area's in the nation, or so I've been told... I don't think downtown detroit could be an SV, but I think you could turn part of metro detroit into one. If you could somehow avoid all the morons and corruption...
- netman21 18y agoAnn Arbor is actually a great supporting argument to PG's essay. It has the University, walkable neighborhoods, diverse culture, and a complete lack of willing investors. Case in point: Arbor Networks. It moved to Boston at the behest of its investors even though the founders still live in Ann Arbor. Ever take a Monday morning flight from Detroit to San Francisco? First Class is packed with frequent flyers that have to fly to SV every week. Not only does SV attract startups, it sucks the brain power and experience out of other cities.
- yef 18y ago"The organic way to do it is to establish a first-rate university in a place where rich people want to live." Obviously not the case. We can just go down the list of top universities and look at the ones that are in desirable places that aren't Silicon Valley. We can even have a laugh at all the names people came up with, like Silicon Alley, Silicon Hills, etc. One very important reason is that the tech talent in the top tech hubs is old-growth, and recycles between all the different tech companies. And it's huge. Funding 1,000 startups for just 5 years still seems very, very small compared to the existing ecosystem in Silicon Valley, let alone the logistics of finding enough of them, vetting, competing with other funds, etc.
- pg 18y agoI did go down that list. See the second section of http://www.paulgraham.com/siliconvalley.html http://www.paulgraham.com/siliconvalley.html .
- yef 18y agoRight, that's exactly my point. None of those places can really compare with the size and power of Silicon Valley. The fact that there's only one Silicon Valley is proof enough. The rest are smaller tech hubs. So there must be some other factor working in favor of Silicon Valley.
- billswift 18y agoThe most likely is also the most obvious - Silicon Valley has had longer to grow.
- yef 18y agoWrong again. Harvard and MIT were founded in 1636 and 1861. Stanford and UC Berkeley were founded in 1885 and 1868. The Boston area saw much of its population growth occur in the 19th century. The Bay Area saw much of its growth in the 20th. So, the Boston area has had more time with its universities, rich people, and population base to develop. Yet Silicon Valley developed faster and came to be the bigger innovation center. Again, I suggest there's something else at work besides the presence of top-flight universities, rich people, and time. What is interesting is that New England was a major force in innovation during the second half of the 19th century, helping to drive the industrialization of the US. So, whatever factor that brought innovation to the Bay Area had to have been strong enough to unseat the existing innovation centers.
- subhash 18y agoWhen a good startup compares two funding offers, it does not automatically pick the one that gives the highest valuation. It has to consider the other intangibles like VC advice, contacts, good PR etc. Given this, a city offering just money is like a loser VC who's really desperate. Why would a good startup want to take that?
- pg 18y agoBecause they need the money. There are plenty of really good startups who struggle to raise money. It would be better than taking money from a loser VC, because you wouldn't be stuck with the loser VC on your board afterward.
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- subhash 18y agoYou seem to be considering only cities in the US because it doesn't seem practical to ask startups to move across countries, especially if they are very different. As a corollary, a city might benefit instead by exploiting the local peculiarities to espouse a startup culture. For example, in the city I live in, it's perfectly acceptable to live with your parents all your life. And that's a perfect fit for lowering living costs. There is also an obsession to live in or close to your hometown, which might force college grads to start up instead of working for a big company in a big city. There is a strong sense in society of admiring entrepreneurship as opposed to employment because of a (convoluted) communistic ideal. There is a lot of investment money readily available from expatriates from the Middle East that they cannot use in their country of residence. This might mean that there is a different route to becoming Silicon Valley and it is all the more difficult to determine because it is not generic.
- YuriNiyazov 18y agoQuite prolific lately. Clearing out the buffer?
- ivankirigin 18y agoI think this essay also describes a way to get a good number of intelligent people to move to a new country based on an island or seastead. While starting a good university is hard, the new country, probably small, supports the other suggested criteria for a startup hub. The feedback of the system would be excellent too, as the companies that move to the new country would hire people that are interested in freedom and startups. The startups would have a particular advantage after moving, in no regulations or taxes to deal with. They'd only need to pay rent (depending on how property taxes, currency, and private property work on the seastead). Considering the numbers described here, there must be thousands of people who could bankroll both the infrastructural parts and the social parts like this.
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- quantumhobbit 18y agoWhen PG said the next startup hub should be like San Francisco, I thought of New Orleans. Not for any objective reason but just because when I think of bizarre tolerant cities I think of those two. If you doubt New Orleans' tolerance you've never been to Bourbon Street. And they both have streetcars. Not that the Big Easy would be suited to a Tech Startup, it is the perfect place for musical startups. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musician%27s_village http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musician%27s_village I think that certain cities inspire or attract creativity and weirdness. It just doesn't have to be tech-related. Any other examples of weird city + creative pursuit?
- r00k 18y agoAnother typo: "bring in a thousands startups"
- rms 18y agoPittsburgh's Alphalab has a stuck in Pennsylvania provision because they are funded by the state of Pennsylvania and ultimately their goal is to create jobs in the state of PA. If you leave, you have to pay back the $25k.
- edahan 18y agoBy all measures, the RTP area of North Carolina should be growing startups and growing massively large companies with the best of them. UNC, Duke, NC State + dozens of smaller colleges/universities within a one hour drive provide a very well educated work force. An existing network of colleges exist within a several hour drive (Wake Forest, etc.) The financial center (hopefully things will return to at least "functioning") of Charlotte is a day trip in a car. Washington D.C., Atlanta and New York are airplane day trips and Boston, Chicago and Miami are overnight trips away. Attracting constant attention from traditional VC funds is not a problem. There is a strong base of both Tech and Life Sciences companies in RTP. This base can provide everything from internal skunk works within these companies to employees leaving to create startups. The weather ain't all that bad - for the East Coast. So - what is the real problem - it isn't money. The problem can be found in passivity, complacency and parochialism. I was once told (by a Silicon Valley born and bred person), "everyone has their prejudices - but these folks (around RTP) actually let that get in the way of making money." The Silicon Valley is not filled with folks singing "Kumbaya" - but it is filled with folks who are more than willing to put aside whatever personal feelings they may have if there is a buck to be made. One of the most prominent venture capitalists in the RTP region once said (in private) that all the "entrepreneurs" around here are hoping that one day they can afford a nice beach house on the Coast, instead of . . . . being entrepreneurs. Nope - RTP is an example - it isn't only about the money. It's really about the people. BUT - money for seed/startup development is essential. Funding startups shouldn't come from the government - it should come from a For Profit Seed/Startup fund that works with, supports and Compensates the Seed Infrastructure (incubators, tech transfers, economic development agencies). The Seed Infrastructure should not concentrate on being landlords, academicians or civil servants. The Seed Infrastructure should concentrate on sourcing, screening and providing post Seed investment oversight for companies that will ultimately be worthy of traditional Series A investments. And remember, this Seed Infrastructure is, for the most part,already funded by local/state governments, academia and corporate sponsorships. The idea of simply throwing money into a broken system won't work. The idea of expecting the traditional VC stage of the Risk Investing industry to innovate or nurture is fallacious. Regardless of what Alan Patricof said in his NYTimes article - VCs don't nurture. VCs provide growth capital for those Seed/Startup enterprises which have reached a level of traction and validation. Thomas Friedman was even more delusional with his idea of giving 20 VC firms $1 billion each to generate innovation. All you are going to get by giving VCs $20 billion is somewhere between $2-$2.5 billion in management fees for the VC firms. I do not know how you can generate an "entrepreneur" mentality in a short time - after all, even the success of Noyce and Friends took a while to take hold after they left Fairchild to start Intel. But, I do know the way to start - please read (and feel free to comment) - http://www.slideshare.net/ElliottDahan/start-fund-feb2009 http://www.slideshare.net/ElliottDahan/start-fund-feb2009 Elliott Dahan The Growth Group elliott(a)thegrowthgroup.com
- velshin 18y ago@netcan, well said. Economic incentives that only serve their intended purpose are rare!
- jf781 18y agoGreat stuff Paul. Welcome to Silicon Valley.
- edahan 18y agoFolks seem to be constantly confusing the Seed stage of the Risk Investng industry with the traditional VC stage. They are differnt. The point for this conversation is that the VC stage does not create jobs or innovate. The VC stage provides growth money, business development contacts and a network for team building. Innovation and initial job creation (which is then expanded upon during the VC stage) is created during the Seed stage. Please review the powerpoint - The START Fund - http://www.slideshare.net/ElliottDahan/start-fund-feb2009 http://www.slideshare.net/ElliottDahan/start-fund-feb2009 Please review interview from VC Experts - http://vcexperts.com/vce/news/buzz/archive_view.asp?id=642 http://vcexperts.com/vce/news/buzz/archive_view.asp?id=642 And - the last thing anyone should hope for is having the People's money go to VCs. Scary thought. The People's money is already helping to support a good Seed Infrastructure of Incubators, Academia, Tech Transfers and Economic Development Agencies. The People's money should continue to go to the Seed Infrastructure. Private money should go to investing in worthy portfolio companies of this existing Seed Infrastruct5ure. And, this private money should be investing on a For Profit basis
- or 18y agoHow do you define what is and what is not a 'Silicon Valley'? that is, when would you declare such an experiment as a success? It has to be some measure which is not only scale - for otherwise a small scale (30 start-ups) pilot could never be considered a success. For example, Route 128 in Boston and RTP both have start-ups and other IT companies yet in a smaller number than SV. What is it precisely that they are lacking and would have made them 'smaller SVs'? I recall seeing a statistics saying that Israel has the largest number of start-ups per capita in the world. Yet it is far too small to have a 'critical mass' for being able to compete with SV. In that sense, can the Tel-Aviv - Herzelia area be considered as a successful 'small SV'?
- evertb 18y agoPaul, very interesting essay, especially seeing that I (and others) are trying to do something similar in Limerick, Ireland to counter the unemployment due partially to the redundancies announced by Dell and the knock-on effect it has on the local economy. Limerick has a good infra-structure for an effort like this; it has a very good university, an institute of technology, an international airport and is located very centrally. Whats more it has a good innovative and entrepreneurial culture. What's important is not so much the investment by larger funds but rather the very early stage investments. These will enable a good idea to be developed into a product or service tied into a company that has all the right ingredients to grow by raising larger amounts of funding and expanding it's management team. The availability of early stage funding will also create a culture of innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship. Apart from the money there should also be hands-on support and a culture of networking and sharing of experience as well contacts. We're trying to create exatly this through the GreenHouse (www.greenhouselimerick.com) and I am amazed by the support that we have received by individuals and the private sector. Would love to have a chat with you sometime as there are a lot of parrallelels between Ycombinator and our plans here in Limerick. Evert Bopp.
- ntoper 18y agoActually France is almost doing what you describe. They do an almost full tax exemption on startup during 8 years (provided you fill a lenghty and time consuming application). They also give easily between 50K to 100K 'no string attached' (provided you use them for R&D) The drawback is you need to fill a lot of paperworks, meaning it's useful for startup with revenues. These are some of the reasons why my startup decided to stay in France. As opposed to what you say, they fund the good and the bad and let the market decides. Nico
- kurisutein 18y agoI think we can do this in Los Angeles. With the way the broadcasting of television and the availability of content online is evolving I think there is great opportunity to distribute this information more efficiently. In LA we have the producers, the actors, the funding, the networks, the nice weather, good schools, mobility, the mindset - there are so many angles to pitch this to start ups. Could the available options in this city lower the costs for start ups. Theres opportunity in the distribution of music, video...all of entertainment. Theater, fashion, - are reality shows still a big hit? How about a website that consolidates a bunch of reality shows - even home grown..... Maybe this posting will get deleted because i went on a tangent?! - thank you for the inspiration Mr. Graham.
- StephanF6 18y agoWhy is more government always the only answer to solving a problem? Looking at all the other attempts to create a Silicon Valley that have pretty much failed and they were all government sponsored. It seems obvious that government can't solve that problem either. With all the social networking capability now it should be easier to find other hackers, founders, and angels in any city of sufficient size. We need a facebook for founders to bring all of this together. Though getting the funders to notice might be an issue.
- dutchkabuki 18y agoI love all of pg's essay, but this one is a startlingly superficial, and naive, commentary on a topic that has been thought about for +20 years. Also, I think pg has become too focused on the types of companies he funds ("ramen consumer web 2.0 companies") and he thinks this is applicable to broader issues. it isn't.
- donaldc 18y agoThere is no way that money alone would be sufficient to recreate a Silicon Valley. Of course, it would help, but some of the other obstacles are daunting. * Non-competes. Within the U.S., California is by far the state least inclined to enforce non-competes. This happened as a historical accident, well before Silicon Valley arose. Getting another jurisdiction to adopt a similar attitude toward non-competes would involve, not money, but politics, which is far messier and more uncertain. The existing large companies in a given state generally perceive, rightly or wrongly, that it is in their interest to have non-competes enforced as vigorously as possible. This, in turn, has two effects detrimental to competing with Silicon Valley: (1) employees often can't go off and start a competing company in their area of expertise without a two-year waiting period, and (2) the really ambitious among them may get around this by moving to California (often Silicon Valley), where their non-competes are unenforceable, thus furthering the Valley's lead. * Specialized insfrastructure. Whatever a hardware or software computer startup needs, it has access to in the Bay Area. Legal services, financing, management expertise (useful as a startup gets bigger), and above all the hardware and software engineers skilled in even the most arcane (but sometimes needed) technologies. This sort of infrastructure cannot simply be bought, it must be grown. * Many of the metro areas that conceivably might be able to make a run at competing with Silicon Valley (i.e. those that are not economic basket cases) already have a different industry that is their specialty, and have no good incentive to try and supplant that industry for a clone of Silicon Valley. And without the other industry being supplanted, it's unlikely that the density of computer/web startups will even approach that of Silicon Valley. With all this to overcome, one billion dollars doesn't seem anywhere near sufficient. Silicon Valley will eventually be rivalled by a metro area that specializes in something related but not quite head-on to what Silicon Valley does. For example, it's conceivable that Seattle, with its focus on more consumer-oriented software and web companies (such as Amazon), could gradually ooze its way into having a bigger share of the more purely web-based startups (such as Google). But that's very different than trying to create a Silicon Valley rival from nothing.
- MikeGale 18y agoIt's not a fixed place that interests me. In a world where on-line places are still a failure I'd love to see the rise of "online places" full of people who you can have a useful, short conversation with. Not hordes of people you "meet" once or twice but small and vibrant and you talk fairly often. People you go out of your way to meet physically, even when they are on the other side of the world. Places like that can be dispersed over the planet and might incubate some interesting business.
- amitu 18y agoIn India, the city that most qualifies the requirements if Mumbai(Bombay). It has got an IIT, and well rich people love to live here. Banglore, Hyderabad, even Pune and New Delhi belt are seen as thriving IT cities of India largely because of the government incentives to companies offering to setup shops there. The employees all hated that those places. A lot of batch mates of mine went to Banglore or Delhi and preferred Bombay to live, but big companies are not around. I guess what is lacking is success stories.
- trent 18y ago'Do you have good weather? Do people live downtown, or have they abandoned the center for the suburbs? Would the city be described as "hip" and "tolerant," or as reflecting "traditional values?" Are there good universities nearby? Are there walkable neighborhoods? Would nerds feel at home?' All the above sounds like Richard Florida and his Creative Class stuff. Not sure I buy into it all, but guess where he lives now... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Florida http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Florida
- Ennis 18y agoThis is very good. Thank you Paul. There is a city in Ontario called Waterloo. I think it fits the characteristics you've laid out. Unfortunately this is Canada and big money moves slowly here. My university exports the greatest number of graduate hires to Microsoft. I am at a loss what it would take to jump start this place. If you have any ideas I'm all ears!
- messel 18y agoInstead of trying to reinvent the Nile, why not focus on the features that make it ripe for farming? Fertile soil and easy transport of goods. Can that be done artificially? If so can it be done virtually? It could take a never ending supply of money to sustain another Silicon Valley. Look at Dubai Internet City.
- aquamarie 17y agowhat is silicone!