frankly speaking

Location, Location, Location

My friend Bryce had a really good post today about how Venture Capital funds are starting to become concentrated within a few distinct firms (do yourself a favor and go read the post). He points out that one of the results of this could be that access to local capital could be much harder to come by. I think he’s absolutely right and would like to expand upon this a bit more. 

I’ll be clear, we live in a moment in history (and I’m trying not to be grandiose here) where anyone can build a company from anywhere. You think you have the next Facebook? You can literally build the company from the Sahara Desert if you want. With Skype, IM, Amazon WebServices, any place with a web connection allows you to build the company of your dreams. 

Here’s the problem, if you don’t have the next big idea or you don’t know anyone who knows how to build back-end databases or the only money you have access to is the loose change in your couch, it’s incredibly hard to build a company. It’s even more difficult if you’re a first time entrepreneur. 

This is one of the reasons why I moved to San Francisco. Sure, when I lived in Salt Lake City, I had the opportunity of working for 2 of the top 5 ecommerce companies in the world and I made a lot of good connections there, but let’s get real, Salt Lake isn’t exactly known for it’s Venture Capital community, nor is it known for being a hub of entrepreneurial spirit (omniture and a few other companies aside). 

There’s something to be said for working in a cafe in Silicon Valley, Silcon Alley, Boulder or even an internet cafe in Beijing, Banglore or Tel Aviv. All of these places have proven access to things that matter - ideas, money and people. It’s really difficult to replicate access to all three of those things in most of the non-tech centric places of the world.

This brings me to another point - there seems to be this back and forth between major tech-hubs about where the ‘next Silicon Valley’ will be. To me, this argument is pointless. There will only be one Silicon Valley, just like there will only be one Michael Jordan. Each tech-hub should seek out their own identity, defined by the success of the companies that are based there.