“My prediction is that, by the end of this decade, we will see some Mark Zuckerbergs emerging from the slums of Sao Paulo or New Delhi, India or Valparaiso, Chile. Why, you ask? Because entrepreneurs are doing what governments can’t—creating innovation ecosystems.” - Vivek Wadhwa
If the lawyers, rather than the technologists, start to guide the future of Silicon Valley, we could see a massive realignment of power in the tech industry…
VentureBeat | You don’t have to live in Palo Alto to become a software billionaire, though it can help.
(Source: Washington Post)
“Vivek, do you notice something strange”, asked my wife, Tavinder, during a start-up awards event hosted by TechCrunch in San Francisco two years ago. The only thing that surprised me, I told her, was that technology celebrities were dressed in ragged jeans and t-shirts.
“No, Vivek, tell me,” she said, clearly wishing to be taken seriously, “Where are the women?”
Business incubators and accelerators are necessary components of a vital entrepreneurial ecosystem that drives job creation and wealth in this country. That ecosystem requires capital to fuel job growth. Black American and urban centers have historically been disconnected from that ecosystem. And, with millions of Black Americans sitting on the sidelines, we don’t need to look much further than ourselves for leadership in changing the equation and brightening the economic future for those who seek to compete in the new innovation economy.
“In the current cast of characters, the Republicans are on our side, our local Democrats support us because our arguments are obvious, and the other Democrats don’t—because they don’t get it. The president understands the argument and would like to support us, he says, but there are various political issues. That’s roughly the situation. That’s been true for twenty years, through different presidents and different leaders. It’s stupid. So my point is that if you want to get a sense of how to screw this up, to put it negatively, then make it harder for us to bring in the world’s smartest people.” - Google’s Eric Schmidt
Silicon Valley and the next $100 billion stimulus
These tech giants need to start thinking in terms of transforming cash flow into job flow. Put the cash to work on infrastructure projects that lead to real jobs.
