SXSW 2009 : Building Entrepreneurial Communities Outside the Valley
I attended a panel this afternoon that was focused on exploring the various hurdles facing technology and entrepreneurial communities outside Silicon Valley and exploring the various strategies that have worked in building these communities around the country.
Admittedly, I’m pretty biased – the whole notion of couching the conversation in terms of the valley vs. everywhere else, feels strangely arrogant and out of touch with the realities of tech-focused entrepreneurialism in this day and age. There were several people “reping” tier-two cities, like: Indianapolis, Portland, and Pittsburgh and I was amazed by the amount of self-deprecation emminating from the crowd.
We discussed Indianapolis’ and Little rock’s venture tax credits and I made an argument (of dubious effectiveness) about the importance of government enabling and encouraging investment, rather than making direct capital investments.
One of the concepts floated by the group (via an essay by Y Combinator) was to pay start-ups to move to a given city. Another was to promote start-up investments to the larger (middle class) investment community via their retirement funds. Unfortunately, the SEC frowns upon marketing those types of speculative securities to anyone that is not an accredited investor. It’s true that you can use retirement accounts to fund investments in start-ups, but depending on the broker (trust me I’ve been through this) one can be put through a pretty arduous process to get the funds punched through compliance.
Keys to building an entrepreneurial community
- Access to capital (flourishing angel and venture community
- Pro-business government
- Access to mentors
- structured support systems
- Unstructured support systems (informal meet-ups, gathering, groups, etc.)
- Availability of platforms that connects entrepreneurs
The bottom line is that there is no template for building a successful entrepreneurial community – successful examples of these types of communities tend to be indigenous (borrowing ideas wholesale doesn’t work) and lets be honest – they have all benefited from a bit of magic and serendipity.
Related Links:
SmallerIndiana
Gravity Ventures
2009
4:30 PM
Agreed; there are examples, and case studies, but no enduring blueprints or templates. Each city has it’s own unique situation, and copying Silicon Valley’s tactics really isn’t the best way forward for any city trying to build a base of entrepreneurs.
The interesting thing is that each city / community is framed by their own experiences, and thus we end up creating our own biases and viewpoints (the “I have a hammer, and I’m going to use a hammer” approach). It’s harder for any of us to question whether we’re using the right tools
I thought the discussion was pretty good, it’s a pretty wide range of issues, and cities have tried a huge range of tactics to create entrepreneurial communities. Even better would have been to focus on the platforms and underlying conditions in each city… which is what Paul Graham really talked about
2009
11:18 AM
[...] impressive, but we all still have a lot of work to do to spread knowledge and best practices. The Building Entrepreneurial Communities panel at SXSW (led by Frank Gruber, Peter Corbett and Nick O’Neill) was a start, but [...]