Startup Communities, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER FIFTEENMYTHS ABOUT STARTUP COMMUNITIES

In 2012, there were several other people spending time thinking about startup communities, including Paul Kedrosky, who at the time was a senior fellow at the Kauffman Foundation. Paul, along with several of his other colleagues at The Kauffman Foundation, including Lesa Mitchell (then Vice President Innovation & Networks at the Kauffman Foundation, now a managing director at Techstars), dedicated significant energy to this effort because they view entrepreneurship as the key to future economic vitality in our country and around the world.

As a result, I asked Paul to weigh in with some of the myths he regularly hears about startup communities. Although these myths are similar to some of the classical problems we discussed earlier, Paul brings a new perspective to the mix and hammers home a number of points made earlier.

We'll begin with one of my favorite myths: “We need to be like Silicon Valley.”

WE NEED TO BE LIKE SILICON VALLEY

It is usually among the first questions I get asked as I travel around the world researching and talking about entrepreneurship, innovation, and venture capital. The question is, of course, How can we create our own Silicon Valley?

To save time, here is the answer to the Silicon Valley question: you can't—you only think you want to.

Granted, everyone thinks they do. It has become a cliché, but there is a Silicon pretty much everywhere as you travel around, to the point that it is meaningless. It ...