Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Tag: silicon valley

  • It’s hard copying Silicon Valley

    It’s hard copying Silicon Valley

    This site has looked at cities wanting to become imitations of Silicon Valley in the past.

    New York, along with London, has been one of the places most likely to create its own Silicon Valley.

    The New York Times though describes how that journey isn’t proving easy, with the city boasting few major tech successes.

    The question though is does New York really want to be Silicon Valley – or San Francisco for that matter?

    Right now the Bay Area is sexy and the centre of the world’s growth industries; but so too were Detroit and Birmingham, England once upon a time.

    Perhaps it’s better to work on being the next big thing rather than trying to imitate today’s successes.

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  • Business as a commodity

    Business as a commodity

    What happens when your hot startup turns out to be in a commodity market?

    According to Danny Crichton at TechCrunch two of the hottest startups of the last five years, Box and Square may be finding out.

    You can make good profits out of a commodity operation – supermarkets around the world have shown you can earn good money from 2c profit on every can of baked beans you sell – but it’s hard work and it’s definitely not glamorous.

    It’s also not particularly attractive for investors looking for the next big thing and commodity businesses struggle to justify the massive burn rates

    The truth for most startup businesses is this is as good as it gets; no billion dollar buyout, no adulation from the tech press and no buying a yacht to rival Larry Ellison’s. Just a decent return from hard work.

    While many of us blinded by the billion dollar success stories of Facebook, Google and Amazon, it’s worthwhile considering that most successful businesses are far more modest ventures.

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  • Playing the startup lottery

    Playing the startup lottery

    Silicon Valley is in the grip of a mass delusion says Reuters’ Felix Salmon in a blog post that dissects the reality of life as a startup founder.

    The Most Expensive Lottery Ticket in the World starts with nod to Gideon Lewis-Kraus’ No Exit: Struggling to survive a modern gold rush that examines the harsh truths and brutal realities of building a new business.

    Salmon though goes further in skewering some of the myths around startups; pointing out that with 90% failure rates not everyone can be ‘killing it’, yet few startup founders will admit their venture are doing anything else but crushing the market, despite the mantra of ‘celebrating failure.’

    Possibly the most telling point Salmon makes is on the myth of the engineering entrepreneur, the truth is most coders value stability over the uncertain life in startup.

    There is no reason whatsoever to believe that computer engineers make particularly good entrepreneurs. Quite the opposite, in fact: engineers tend to do quite well in structured environments, where there are clear problems to solve, and relatively badly in the chaos of a startup, where the most important skills are non-engineering ones, like being able to attract talent and investors. No Exit makes it very clear that the life of a startup founder is a miserable one, and that engineers are invariably happier when they’re working for a big company.

    Life in a startup, or any small business, can be miserable if you don’t have the skills – and most importantly the risk appetite – for doing your own thing. This is a point often missed by those hyping the start up world.

    Salmon’s piece is a good read and it illustrates that founding a business or taking the risk of working in a startup is not for everyone. It’s a timely reminder for anyone looking at liberating themselves from their cubicle and making the jump into self employment.

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  • Technology’s Ayn Rand fallacy

    Technology’s Ayn Rand fallacy

    Adam Curtis in his wonderful BBC series All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace discusses how Ayn Rand influenced many in the tech industry.

    Having been accused of being a ‘techno-utopist’ Curtis’ story is a good reminder of the limits of technology and how the future doesn’t usually turn out how we imagine.

    The Ayn Rand influence is worth reflecting on as Rand’s libertarian outloook is shared by many in the technology industry – from the lowest PC technician to the highest flying software mogul.

    Rand’s beliefs are best portrayed in her own words, in a 1958 interview with Mike Wallace she tells of how she believes in “challenging the moral code of altruism.”

    In Rand’s world view it was the duty of each man to achieve their own happiness, self sacrifice and caring for other is weakness.

    That technologists should have those views is curious in that the entire computer industry, the internet and Silicon Valley itself is the result of massive US government spending during World War II and the Cold War.

    An more delicious irony is the centre of Silicon Valley, Stanford University, is itself the result of a bequest by railroad tycoon and former Californian governor Leland Stanford.

    So self-sacrifice, altruism and government spending forms the basis of the entire modern tech industry – something that computer industry’s libertarians ignore, if they are conscious of history at all.

    An even bigger contradiction is the belief that the internet dismantles government and corporate power – one of the lessons of Edward Snowden’s revelations is how comprehensively intelligence agencies monitor online communications.

    When the history of Silicon Valley and the 21st Century tech boom is written, one of the compelling themes will be the contrast between the industry’s beliefs and reality.

    The final chapters of that history will describe how that contrast between reality and beliefs is resolved.

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  • London’s quest to be the next Silicon Valley

    London’s quest to be the next Silicon Valley

    In November 2010 British Prime Minister David Cameron set out his vision for London becoming the centre of Europe’s digital economy.

    “We’re not just going to back the big businesses of today, we’re going to back the businesses of tomorrow.” Cameron said. “We are firmly on the side of the high-growth, highly innovative companies of the future.

    Three years later London’s tech scene is booming with more than fifty incubators across the city and over three thousand digitally connected businesses in the Shoreditch district.

    Building London’s resurgence

    Gordon Innes, the CEO of the city’s economic development agency London and Partners, puts this down to a combination of factors including a young and diverse population coupled with being a global media and finance centre.

    At the time of Cameron’s speech the cluster of tech startups around Shoreditch’s Silicon Roundabout area was already firmly established and the British government was acknowledging the industry’s successes.

    “What we did, what the mayor did, what the government did,” Innes said, was to make sure that we removed as many barriers as possible to let the sector grow as rapidly as possible.”

    The value of teamwork

    Part of that effort involved business leaders, London & Partners, the mayor’s and Prime Minister’s advisers meeting on a regular basis to thrash out what the tech sector needed for the UK’s tech sector to thrive.

    “There were changes to the tax credits for R&D and an important one was the Enterprise Incentive Scheme,” says Innes.

    “Linked to that was a recognition of the need to link angels and high net worth individuals to be educated about the sector. It’s not just enough to balance the risk through the tax code.”

    Another success for the UK startup sector was the British government introducing an entrepreneur’s visa that makes the country more attractive to foreign founders of startups.

    Having built an community of tech startups, the city is now looking at how to grow the sector. “The big priority over the next few years is growing your business in London.” Innes says.

    “Making sure you’ve not only have access to angel finance but also to stage one and stage two venture fund capital, you’ve got access to capital markets through new groups on the stock exchange and the AIM market.”

    One of London’s big challenges is linking the city’s strong financial sector to the tech industry with a range of organisations like London Angels and City Meets Tech.

    Sharing the vision

    A notable point about the successes of London & Partners and Tech City UK is the co-operation between the levels of government along with having a shared vision of where the city should sit in the global economy.

    Having a unified, strong and consistent vision is probably the best thing governments can offer a growing entrepreneurial or industry hub.

    “Government can’t create that but government can certainly support it or, if it’s not careful, can destroy it,” says Innes.

    London is showing how to support a growing sector of their business community, other cities need to be taking note how they can compete in a tough global market.

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