Silicon Valley: The Untold Story
Posted On: March 2, 2018
Posted In: Apple, documentary, Fast Company, film, Fortune, Hewlett Packard, history, HP, Mark Sullivan, Michal Lev-Ram, Silicon Valley, TV
Comments: No Responses
Posted In: Apple, documentary, Fast Company, film, Fortune, Hewlett Packard, history, HP, Mark Sullivan, Michal Lev-Ram, Silicon Valley, TV
Comments: No Responses
Documentarian Michael Schwarz turns his lens on Silicon Valley
As I watched this segment yesterday, I shook my head at the myopic perspective expressed by Scott McGrew and Michael Schwarz that Silicon Valley can’t be replicated. That might have been the case in the past, but for the last few years that just is no longer true.
How ironic that this morning, the New York Times published in The Shift section “Silicon Valley Is Over, Says Silicon Valley” by Kevin Roose – https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/04/technology/silicon-valley-midwest.html?utm_source=quora about a three-day bus tour by a dozen VC’s of a tour of the Midwest.
“If it weren’t for my kids, I’d totally move,” said Cyan Banister, a partner at Founders Fund. “This could be a really powerful ecosystem.”
Robin Li of GGV Capital, about a co-working space in the renovated the Madison building in downtown Detroit, “This is nicer than San Francisco.”
When investors are marveling at the cheap real estate and calibre of engineers in the Rust Belt, when Amazon is shopping cities for its GV2, doesn’t that tell you that there is real competition coming from Silicon Prairie and Silicon Alley?
Granted, there are still plenty of ambitious startup entrepreneurs all over the world who want to come to Silicon Valley. It’s on the order of a holy pilgrimage. But, they’re here for two weeks, two months, maybe even two or more years, always with the intention to move back or at least, away. They come for the money and connections, then leave.
But, the most recent statistics for 4Q17 show that more people, i.e. technology professionals, are moving out of the Bay Area and San Francisco than are moving in.
Cost of living and quality of life are big motivators, but also is the fact that you don’t have to be in Silicon Valley anymore to benefit from “Silicon Valley.” Just like Detroit never thought it could be replaced as the center for automobile production, so, too, SiliconValley could find itself in the same boat if people don’t take off their blinders.