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Why doesn't someone raise a VC fund to build another Silicon Valley somewhere else? I personally don't think it involves that much magic. Just build a brand n
by epicureanideal 12y ago
Why doesn't someone raise a VC fund to build another Silicon Valley somewhere else? I personally don't think it involves that much magic. Just build a brand new giant university in a relatively cheap place where you've bought up a ridiculous amount of land. Hire a bunch of Ivy League professors to teach there and establish departments. Market heavily. Around the university, build tons of housing for students. Further out, mixed office parks and all the goodies that people like about SF... lots of selection of food, drink, culture, etc. and pay up front so that a reasonable percentage of this is there before anybody shows up. Throw in some partnerships with big name companies and some VC firms to locate some startups there.
Expensive, yes. Profitable, I would think so. Sign me up to live there when it's built. I'd love to work for a similar salary and save a good 30% of it per year (while still leaving healthy profit margins for the investors).
Note to downvoters: You do realize that the US government essentially provided this sort of start to Silicon Valley right, and that after that there were a couple now-billionaire real estate investors who provided a lot of the office space?
- Kalium 12y agoIf by "expensive" you mean "billions"... with profitability not nearly so assured. You cannot simply build some of those things. Culture and good schools take decades to build.
- epicureanideal 12y agoMany people would probably agree with you but my personal unsubstantiated opinion is that both can be bought. Want good schools? Hire good teachers (and bring in a class of workers who care about their kids' educations and help their children succeed). Want culture? Hire musicians, artists, etc. Other natural culture will come by building the right kind of environment (see The Timeless Way of Building) and bringing in a bunch of talented people with cash to spend to generate the kind of environment they want by paying for bands to play, artists to make art, baristas, bartenders, etc. Re: Olin College, I don't often hear it as often as Stanford probably because of the relative size of the marketing budget, but the software engineers who come out of Olin College are probably not paid so significantly less that a 30-40% reduction in rent wouldn't compensate. Re: $Billions... Or a couple thousand software engineers organized to invest together. Re: "You simply cannot build some of those things." Challenge accepted! Er, well, but I'm short about a billion dollars in order to attempt it. Know anybody who can help with that?
- Kalium 12y agoPeople can and do try to build good schools with cold hard cash. However... when was the last time you heard Olin College mentioned in the same breath as Stanford? It's much, much easier said than done. It's still the work of decades and absurd amounts of money. Every freaking city of notable size in America has tried to dump money into getting their own local startup ecosystem going, and most of them have gone a lot of nowhere.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- absherwin 12y agoAverage starting salaries: Stanford engineering: $74,467[1] Olin: $78,074[2] The first is from (2010-2013) while the second is (2011-2014) which explains why Olin reports slightly higher numbers. [1]http://www.nerdwallet.com/nerdscholar/grad_surveys/top-salaries http://www.nerdwallet.com/nerdscholar/grad_surveys/top-salar... [2]http://www.olin.edu/content/results/ http://www.olin.edu/content/results/
- anewcolor 12y agoMoney can't buy everything
- tormeh 12y agoIt can't buy everything, but if you're rich you get most of the remainder for free. I mean, you can't buy everlasting youth or other medical/physical current impossibilities, but I don't think that was what you were thinking.
- anigbrowl 12y agoHow to do it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNfGyIW7aHM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNfGyIW7aHM
- bronson 12y agoYou can live there right now. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=hsieh%20vegas&sort=byDate&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?query=hsieh%20vegas&sort=byDate&pref... There's no university but the Downtown Project has everything else you want.
- epicureanideal 12y agoI heard about this before, but I am not familiar with exactly what went wrong. I'd imagine a bunch of things could be learned from this so it wouldn't happen again.
- bronson 12y agoIt's still there, and it still has the features you claim you're looking for. You don't sound very eager to check it out though...? As for your edit: "the US government essentially provided this sort of start to Silicon Valley" No. Re-read your first paragraph. The US government provided none of that. Watch Steve Blank again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo
- ido 12y agoBut there are plenty of existing cheap (relative to SF) cities that have all that sans the tech jobs and somehow they didn't become the new SV.
- klipt 12y agoFor example, Philadelphia is pretty cheap compared to the Bay Area, and already has an Ivy League university! Pittsburgh is even cheaper and has Carnegie Mellon - not part of the Ivy League, but better than most Ivy League universities for Computer Science.
- wyclif 12y agoPhilly also has a burgeoning tech scene. Not of the same size, scope, or influence as SV, to be sure. But a lot better than it was even 5 years ago.
- tobias3 12y agoSomething like that? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Abdullah_University_of_Science_and_Technology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Abdullah_University_of_Sci... (have never been there)
- epicureanideal 12y agoFantastic. Thanks for linking. That seems like something similar, although more university centric than business-and-residences centric. But it seems like a good example of a planned development done right.