How to be Silicon Valley

Paul Graham recently published an essay titled “How to be Silicon Valley” (click here). He discusses his take on why Silicon Valley is so hard to imitate and what makes it especialy conducive to starting a company. Throughout the essay he comes back to people as the main driver. In fact, two types of people – the rich (investors) and the nerds. I would argue that the nerds are much more important than the investors, but let’s save that for another time. Anyway, I agree with the basic premise. It is extremely hard to find young people that are smart and willing to take risks. The latter being important. There are plenty of smart young people out here in NJ/NY, but the risk taking isn’t there. Now, I’m not saying there aren’t people starting companies, but the ratios are much much smaller than the major hubs like Boston or SV. I attended an Angel conference a few weeks ago and remember one investor mentioning that he knew of a few places in the SV area where you could find people talking about or working on startups at any time of the day. I find that amazing and exhilarating. I wish we had some place in NJ or even NY that we could say the same. If we do and I don’t know about it. Please contact me. Anyway, he makes some good points on what attracts the right kind of people for startups. Check it out.