There is a lot of talk from other regions around the world about how they will become the next silicon valley. Calling themselves the Silicon Glen, Silicon Forest, Silicon Alley, etc etc. But that’s what most of it is, just talk. I think the main difference between the real silicon valley and the rest of the contenders is substance. It’s the huge network of venture capitalists here who all know each other and compete for deals. It’s the universities that supply some of the world’s best talent (or at least they are perceived to be the best) to startups. It is blogs like www.techcrunch.com that feed the machine with stories, gossip and fuel the fire of young entrepreneurs, wanting to make money on the next new disruptive technology. It’s also the weather – the weather and landscape around here make it a very attractive place to live and work.
I want to give two examples of this huge difference between here (Silicon Valley) and other regions. Dublin, in Ireland is booming right now, but only in one sector – high technology startups. A friend of mine Connor Murphy, has a startup called DataHug and he can’t find the engineers he needs – there is a huge talent shortage in Dublin as companies from Silicon Valley have sucked up a lot of the local talent. Zynga, Paypal, Google and many others have set up their EU headquarters in Ireland. However, what’s missing in Dublin is one key ingredient – venture capital finance. I was at the excellent conference run by Paddy Cosgrave called the Dublin Web Summit (#DWS6) recently and Mike Butcher from TechCrunch was on stage and asked a few simple questions to the crowd.
1. Who here is a CEO/founder/employee of a startup company?- about a quarter of the hands in the audience went up.
2. Who here is involved in some other way with startups? – again, many hands went up
3. Who here is a venture capitalist?- Out of a crowd of over 1000 people, only 2 hands went up, including Will Prendergast from NCB.
This is what’s missing in Ireland, but it’s certainly not missing here in Silicon Valley. I know there were a few other VCs in that crowd who didn’t have the balls to put up their hands. It was like they wanted to hide and just not make any deals!
One more example. I was in the Apple Store the other day in Palo Alto, arguably the heart of Silicon Valley. I was getting my Macbook Air fixed and I overhead a conversation by this kid. He was talking to the ‘genuises’ in the store about a software program he was devloping. “I’m a developer” he said proudly. I was really curious, and I started chatting with him and asked:
“So you’re a developer are you?” “Yes, I’m making a game!”
“What are you developing” – “A game on the iPad, called Trigger Finger”
“Where did you learn to code?” – “In a summer code camp, in Stanford University”
“In what language?” – “Objective C”
“How old are you?” – “I just turned 12″
I was blown away – this is why Silicon Valley will always be No. 1. You have a crazy amount of talent here, as witnessed by this young developer. I don’t know what you were doing when you were 12, but I certainly wasn’t coding in a top university. I would have liked to learn to code!
For any aspiring Silicon Pretenders – start thinking more like Silicon Valley – start some summer code camps and start giving money to crazy young startups – you never know what might happen.
