Late last night I was finishing up a presentation for a class I’m taking when Jeremiah Owyang from Forrester made a statement on Twitter which made me cringe. The statement, though profound to someone living in the heart of Silicon Valley, is completely absent any reason to the observer outside of the Valley. Keep in mind the Parable of the Three Bloggers as I quote him.
We work really hard in Silicon Valley, why? It’s not the money (only a few strike it ‘rich’) I think it’s the passion for creating new
Someone should remind Jeremiah of the 140 character limit of Twitter. ;)
I take a lot of exception to this statement because it is exceptionally wrong. Not only exceptionally wrong, but naive.
First of all, as an insider it’s easy to say everyone is just working to create and innovate. While that’s true to a certain extent, it was much more true two years ago. As the outsider to the Valley that I am, I’d say the Valley is one of four North American hotspots for money flow – Boston, New York, Canada (Toronto) and the Valley.
That places these four locations on the map as one of the four places every entrepreneur in North America wants to be. The reason why DEMO and TechCrunch 40 were so successful is because entrepreneurs want money!
Yes, they need money. This is true. But the drive for more money is beyond what it was when the interactive web was in its infancy and companies really were sprouting up because people wanted to work passionately on a project. They discovered some idea and the technology had matured enough that the idea could be pursued.
Today, we are talking about San Francisco-based Automattic valuating at numbers well in excess of $200M, Palo Alto-based Facebook (along with some fuzzy math) weighing in at some $15B. GigaOmniMedia, the parent company of GigaOm and the rest of Om Malik’s empire getting $1M+ for hardware, or something…
Everyday, new companies are being funded and it’s mostly in the Valley.
I love the Valley. I love the entrepreneurs in the Valley. I wish I was there living but no job has taken me there yet. But it’s a very introspective and naive thought to believe that the Valley is full of people who just are passionate. Yes, passionate people make the best companies. That I will not argue with. I think there is more passion to get the big exit than to build a solid product.
I could be wrong. Feel free to correct me. ;-)