Paul Graham on how to “build” a Silicon Valley
It’s always an exciting day when Paul Graham writes something new. It’s like waiting for the new Red Hot Chili Peppers (great album btw), or the new Age of Empires (meh).
Paul writes about what’s necessary to make a Silicon Valley-like place.
I think you only need two kinds of people to create a technology hub: rich people and nerds.
I remember in the mid to late-nineties, there were all sorts of Silicon-this and Valley-that, it was pathetic. What made it particularly ridiculous, was that the people behind these names, thought that we were stupid. They thought that by having 3 subsidiaries of tech companies in the same block, was all it took to fool us.
In his new essay, Paul has the definitive guide for building your own Silicon Valley. I certainly feel this is a special place when I’m on the 101 going home and drive by Ebay, Yahoo, McAfee and Sun, next to each other.
Venture investors, however, prefer to fund startups within an hour’s drive.
This reminds me that at my first startup in the Valley (circa ‘96), the then CEO now turned VC, claimed that the reason why it was important to be in the Valley, was that investors refuse to drive for more than 30 minutes. So apparently now it’s an hour. I wonder why that is. Is it because 10 years later there is more traffic, or maybe more competition between VCs, or more greed.