Commentary

How to Build a Successful Startup Ecosystem in your City

Techstars recently launched a Startup Ecosystem Development offering, which is designed to work alongside of communities around the world to help them build a more vibrant environment for entrepreneurship. The program has been in an R&D/beta-launch phase the last couple years, but the first official program will take place in Buffalo, New York over the next three years.

Yesterday, to introduce the program and answer questions about what they’re up to, Chris Heivly (who leads Ecosystem Development at Techstars), Brad Feld (author of Startup Communities and a Techstars co-Founder), and Eric Reich (chairman of 43 North, the startup support organization in Buffalo that is partnering with Techstars to lead the effort) participated in an hour-long segment on Crowdcast.

I embed the event below and encourage anyone interested in the topic to give it a listen—it’s definitely worth your hour and is full of wisdom and insights from these three.

New Study on Women Founders

Last week, I published a new report for the Center for American Entrepreneurship, titled The Ascent of Women-Founded Venture-Backed Startups in the United States. The study is the culmination of months of research and collaboration with some amazing friends at the National Center for Women & Information Technology and beyond.

Student Loan Debt is Killing American Entrepreneurship

Ethan Mollick, a professor at the Wharton business school, Tweets about a paper that causally links student loan debt with declining entrepreneurship in America (including in high-growth, high-tech activities). By exploiting two “exogenous shocks” to the student loan system (public policy changes that are unrelated to entrepreneurship), the authors demonstrate that student loan debt not only causes individuals to start fewer businesses (especially in the high-tech, high-growth segments), but when they do, they are (a) less likely to be successful, and (b) experience greater hardship from the (already more likely) business failures. These are not exactly the type of conditions that encourage people to start new ventures, particularly when competing in a harsh competitive environment of increasing market power, raising incumbency advantage, and expanding wage opportunities at larger companies.

Robert Noyce, Mao Zedong and Lessons for Startup Communities

In 1957, a group of eight Silicon Valley executives lead by Robert Noyce resigned from famed Shockley Semiconductor to start a rival in Fairchild Semiconductor. This sort of thing happens all the time in Silicon Valley today, but at the time, it was a watershed moment that sent reverberations throughout the industry. The Traitorous Eight, as they became known, changed the course of innovation forever by injecting the region with an entrepreneurial ethos that continues to this day and has made Silicon Valley the envy of the world.

Around the same time, nearly 6,000 miles (~10,000 kilometers) away, a very different type of revolution was taking place in Communist China. In 1958, Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong launched the Great Leap Forward—a wide-sweeping series of economic and political reforms aimed at transitioning China from an agricultural economy to an industrialized one, and at consolidating power around the socialist regime.

So, why on earth am I linking the Great Chinese Famine with the essence of Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurial spirit and with startup communities today?

The J-Curve of Startup Community Transition

In The Startup Community Way, my upcoming book with Brad Feld, we explain that startup communities must be viewed through the lens of complex adaptive systems. Such systems are characterized as having many elements (people and things), interdependencies (connections between them), feedback loops (actions lead to reactions), and as being in a constant state of evolution (never at rest).

We make the effort to explain the complex systems framework and tie it to startup communities because the nature of these systems requires a very different type of engagement than we are used to in most of our professional and civic lives. Complex systems require different skills (diversity v. expertise), mental processes (synthesis v. analysis), tactical approaches (experimentation v. planning), and goals (right conditions v. right outcome), among other factors we discuss in the book.

One of these prominent conditions in complex adaptive systems that I want to talk about today is Basins of Attraction. In neoclassical economics, it is assumed that the the economy (also a complex adaptive system) is moving towards a point of stability—an equilibrium. This is done for reasons of simplifying mathematics, but it also has the impact of making many economic predictions unreliable.

Instead of a single point of stability, Basins of Attraction takes the view that there are many such potential “resting places” and that a complex evolutionary process will determine which of these wins out. Basins of Attraction in complex systems—like startup communities—can be thought of as a sort of center of gravity where things can get stuck. Critically, they can get stuck in “good” or “bad” outcomes.

Startup Communities Are Not Like Recipes, They are Like Raising Children

I’ve often heard people say “building startup communities (or startup ecosystems) is not about the ingredients, it’s about the recipe.” What they mean is that a focus on the individual people, institutions, and resources will provide only limited insight or success, and that what matters most is how these things all come together. While integration versus elements is the right concept, a recipe is the wrong analogy.

Back and Ahead

I started out 2019 on the blog by looking back at last year: my posting activity, traffic patterns, and which posts were the most popular. I posted 29 entries last year, which is around 2.4 per month or about one post every other week. The maximum was 6 posts (in November) and in three months I wrote nothing (in June, July, and September). The median was 3 posts.

I’d like to be much better about posting this year—not just frequency but consistency. I write on a number of other platforms and am working on a few major projects right now—including crashing towards a deadline for a book manuscript. I also tend to write lengthy and analytical (data-driven) pieces, which means it simply takes longer to produce content (did I mention already that I’m pretty busy doing other things?).

How the Geography of Startups and Innovation Is Changing

We’re used to thinking of high-tech innovation and startups as generated and clustered predominantly in fertile U.S. ecosystems, such as Silicon Valley, Seattle, and New York. But as with so many aspects of American economic ingenuity, high-tech startups have now truly gone global. The past decade or so has seen the dramatic growth of startup ecosystems around the world, from Shanghai and Beijing, to Mumbai and Bangalore, to London, Berlin, Stockholm, Toronto and Tel Aviv. A number of U.S. cities continue to dominate the global landscape, including the San Francisco Bay Area, New York, Boston, and Los Angeles, but the rest of the world is gaining ground rapidly.

The King of Queens

Well, it’s official. The Amazon HQ2 sweepstakes is finally over and the winner(s) are New York City, Washington, DC, and Amazon itself of course (in reverse order). I offer my congratulations to both cities—this is a BIG win for both. Kudos to Amazon too—it couldn’t have chosen two better locations. And finally, I suppose some tip of the cap is in order to Jeff Bezos—the new King of Queens.

New Evidence on Fostering Productive Startup Communities

Last week, Endeavor Insight (the research arm of Endeavor Global) teamed up with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to publish a new report on fostering productive startup communities. The report was authored by Rhett Morris and Lili Török of Endeavor, and I think it is one of the best pieces of empirical work I've ever seen on startup communities.

Solving Canada’s startup dilemma

Canada, we increasingly hear, is becoming a global leader in high-tech innovation and entrepreneurship. Report after report has ranked Toronto, Waterloo and Vancouver among the world’s most up-and-coming tech hubs. Toronto placed fourth in a ranking of North American tech talent this past summer, behind only the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle and Washington, and in 2017 its metro area added more tech jobs than those other three city-regions combined.

All of that is true, but the broader trends provide little reason for complacency. Indeed, our detailed analysis of more than 100,000 startup investments around the world paints a more sobering picture. Canada and its leading cities have seen a substantial rise in their venture capital investments. But both the country and its urban centres have lost ground to global competitors, even as the United States’ position in global start-ups has faltered.

Thoughts on the New Jersey Innovation Evergreen Fund

On October 1st, New Jersey Governor Philip Murphy announced a $500 million plan to increase venture capital investment in the state. The move is motivated by New Jersey’s decline (relative to other states) in venture capital investment the last decade, and his belief that an expansion of publicly-subsidized venture capital pools will help turn things around.

Information on the plan is still sparse and there are a lot of details that need filling in. But that’s precisely why we’re speaking up now. The details really matter here—history is littered with failed government venture capital programs that didn’t get the specifics right. So, Governor Murphy, if you’re listening, we’d like to share some ideas with you as your plan begins to take shape.

Startup Communities Revisited

Startup Communities Revisited

Writing a book is a very hard thing. It's one of the hardest things I've done professionally. It is the nonlinearity of the process that makes it so difficult and the sheer perseverance that's required. It's remarkable to see how different the content is today compared with where it was on day one.

Part of the process means writing a lot of words that no one will ever see. I have written literally tens of thousands of words—several complete chapters even—that will never see the light of day. I was going through one of those today and decided I will publish it here. It is a brief summary of Brad's book Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City, meant to be a refresher for those familiar with the material and to quickly get newcomers up to speed. I also added layers of my own context, data points, and interpretation.

Startups Move to The Bay Area for Good Reason, but That Advantage May Be Waning

We've heard it in startup communities everywhere—while it's become increasingly likely for high-potential companies to get started most anywhere, the best ones often leave for Silicon Valley. One of the most commonly-cited reasons is that Valley investors require companies to move. That may be true, but perhaps it's for a much bigger reason—because doing so is beneficial for these companies. But, what do the data say? Jorge Guzman of Columbia University attempted to answer this question in a research paper: Go West Young Firm: The Value of Entrepreneurial Migration for Startups and Their Founders. Here’s what he found.

The New York Yankees and Startup Communities

Startup communities are examples of complex adaptive systems. This means many things for understanding and influencing their behavior, but today I want to focus on two concepts: non-linearity (the sum is greater than the parts) and synergistic integration (interaction between the parts matters a lot). To make my point, I’ll draw on an example from my favorite sport.

The More of Everything Problem

The More of Everything Problem

Last week, the European Investment Fund—the small business investment arm of the European Union—announced a new $2.6 billion fund-of-funds to support venture capital deployment in the continent. The EIF is already the most active LP in European venture funds by a long shot. 

That got me to thinking: is this the best way to stimulate startup activity in the EU? Is a lack of venture capital the biggest constraint facing European startups right now? If so, is this the right way to go about it? How else could that money have been used? What is the opportunity cost?

To me, it is another reminder of something that I’m seeing in startup communities everywhere: what I’m calling The More of Everything Problem.

The Nobel Prize in Startup Communities

The Nobel Prize in Startup Communities

I’m currently working with Brad Feld on a sequel to his 2012 paradigm shifting book Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City. Last week, I wrote about behavior and mindset in a startup community, and think one of the points we’re making—about cooperation and playing positive sum games—is worth sharing here. Not only do cooperative strategies in startup communities make intuitive sense, but there is also a fair amount of supporting evidence. In fact, even a Nobel Prize was awarded for ideas that support the central thesis behind startup communities.

Silicon Valley is Not Over

A New York Times article published yesterday declares that “Silicon Valley is Over.” This follows a recent Wired article declaring that “Everyone Hates Silicon Valley.” While this does make for great journalism, I worry that it sets a unrealistic expectations in other parts of the country. Silicon Valley is not over—not even close. And when you suggest that it is, it implies a Silicon Valley’s downfall will be a big win for everyone else. That’s zero-sum thinking and I don’t agree with it.