Tuesday, January 24, 2017

Does Silicon Valley Own the New Wave of Entrepreneurship?

(From Toptal's blog, The New Wave of Entrepreneurship;Photos from http://www.ablogtowatch.com, http://securityaffairs.co, http://geniusapp.com, and http://www.rakenapp.com )
I recently read a blog by Matt Swanson on the Toptal site that discussed the difficulty for innovative startups outside Silicon Valley to raise capital from Silicon Valley VCs (The New Wave of Entrepreneurship). Swanson says that Silicon Valley suffers from a closed ecosystem and accompanying tunnel vision. (I suspect this same exclusiveness is what keeps most of those VCs from funding women-owned or minority-owned businesses as well.)

He makes the point that developing the next cool app or the next iPhone is all people in Silicon Valley focus on, when instead there should be a way for entrepreneurs looking to solve problems in varying own industries in other parts of the country to have access to the capital and the brain power that is concentrated in Silicon Valley.

Swanson predicts this situation will change. I believe it already is. CB Insights says that AI deals are at an all-time high, and they are being done in 35 states. AI is only one fast-growing industry that is not just concentrated in Silicon Valley - think Real Estate Tech, FinTech, and HealthTech.

Harness Technology to Change Your Industry


Entrepreneurs come from all sorts of backgrounds and industries. But they can be uniquely successful if they can harness technology to fill a need in their field. My coauthor, Ed McLaughlin, did that with his real estate services business by starting a separate company called Sequentra. Sequentra delivered a proprietary software solution that enabled workflows, improved access to critical information, and tightened his company's link to their customers. (You can read more about it in our book, "The Purpose Is Profit: The Truth about Starting and Building Your Own Business")  

How can you harness technology to create a new business in your own industry? As he says in his blog, Matt Swanson wants to help you do that.


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