Recently Glenn Kelman wrote a less than praising post about Silicon Valley. Sadly there is a lot of truth in it but also a lot of hype. Silicon Valley is the Hollywood of tech and Kelman is focusing on all those high budget films that suck. There’s a lot more to The Valley for Entrepreneurs and lifestyle when you look around and read further than Tech Crunch
Looking at the valley’s past they were working on apples and we’ve moved on to oranges. My father and father in law , who came to this valley during a boom of their own, were working on things (and still are) that the current generation of entrepreneurs can’t even maintain a conversation about past introduction much less truly appreciate. I want to talk with my father about the latest trends in internet development and he wants to talk about the latest silicon process and how small they can get transistors. He also never fails to remind me we would have nothing without their innovation.
The fact is the valley is leading the technology circus and by the time a generation develops some nostalgia the next generation is already moving on with the next thing. Sure there’s a lack of nostalgia but only at the expense of innovation. Beats the crap out of sitting around and talking about high school.
Kelman is correct to assume people don’t live here cause they like it here. My wife and I have considered leaving many times and heading up to the Portland or Seattle area. But finally we are settling in.
The real problem with Silicon Valley is the hard to find community. We’ve been living in downtown San Jose and whenever I stroll around downtown all I can manage to find is a semi-vibrant club scene (clubs suck!). There’s no real music scene, no extraordinary hang outs, and not a lot of people my age to be found. In fairness I do work alone but I also do try to meet people around here.
It’s a tough place if you want more in life than work. But if you’re willing to work on it, you can find great friends and communities here too. The reality though, as Kelman points out, is there will be a lot of difficulty getting a good flourishing community, particularly of young people, when you have to work 24/7/365 just to pay rent or buy a house. On the same token Silicon Valley will probably continue to lead for a long time because many here are willing to work so hard.
Is it really just the one school?
I don’t understand how Kelman can be so pompous as to finger Stanford for the success and failure of the valley when he says “Yet we all know that without Stanford the Valley would grow old and die.” Great schools tend to make great corporate leaders (And some bad public leaders!).
Stanford certainly has produced a lot for this valley and without it we would not do as well. But Seattle would certainly suffer with the loss of Stanford or any other great ivy league university as well. I fail to see how silicon valley would not be able to leech talent from other great universities as well as Seattle does. The fact is California at large has many great universities to provide talent to support the valley along with ivy league grads willing to travel here.
California simply takes up where Washington leaves off and we happen to take a share of their potential talent into our universities as a result. We have great higher education and that investment pays off big. Sadly our K-12 scene is much less than spectacular.
You gotta be cool here (for now)
Kelman says “Dingbat ideas are scattered like pennies on a sidewalk”. That sounds about right for Silicon Valley. What’s even more amazing is the money that will chase around those ideas.
It’s been a real struggle for us to get attention with our startup in silicon valley because we are so uncool. Even though Kelman thinks Redfin isn’t cool I think we take his cake in the un-coolness arena at MerchantOS.
Yes things get very crazy here and to the point of absurdity but it’s exciting and certainly Seattle gets a lot of value out of it. Somebody needs to try these ideas out and some of those people with “cool” ideas do succeed. When Kelman says “But some of the best – and most meaningful — new ventures may be the ones that combine old and new business models, experience and youthful recklessness, perseverance and opportunism. And it is these ventures that really seem to belong in Seattle.”, in the later half he’s just flat out wrong. They don’t belong in Seattle any more than they do in Silicon Valley. True we have a lot of “dingbat ideas” in the works but there are as many good ideas here too. They’re just harder to see cause they’re obscured by “coolness” taking center stage.
West vs. Northwest
There’s advantages and disadvantages to the handful of “entrepreneurial cities”. This post wasn’t intended to start a battle over which is better but instead to defend silicon valley and point out that it is awesome that people have a choice.
There are a lot of advantages and disadvantages to any city over another and be thankful that you don’t have to settle with only one to find a great entrepreneurial setting.
I for one will be staying here. When they close down Stanford it’ll be a sad day :-)~