Where do you perceive the next Silicon Valley to be?
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Answers by Michael Ballai, David Bishop, Vinod Khosla, Amit Agarwal, Luis Davila, Jeff Wilsbacher, M M, Thomas Glover and ray Zinn
Answered April 25
Don’t confuse a place with a purpose. The whole purpose of technology was and is to create and transform beyond the traditional boundaries of location or environment. The two desktop computers in my living room are no more likely to get pride of place when I use a laptop on my couch or a tablet in the parking lot to do the same thing. Back when I was programming, much of the code I created on my own for myself was repurposed for the corporate client who hired me to do some work on their underwriting system. It began in my living room and not the IT department of their headquarters.
There are traditional places for many things. But technology pretty much blows the doors off location for the future.
Answered Feb. 15, 2016
Smaller towns and rural areas could be the next big attraction for startups because of two things: cost and opportunity for innovation.
Updated April 25
There won’t be one. Here’s why.
30–40 years ago, even the idea of technology was a difficult concept to sell. The typical mindset of computers back then was “that’s not the future”.
To overcome this mindset, we needed a think tank of brilliant engineers in a short square-mile radius to “think different” and change the status quo. We needed the smartest engineers in a room building the first search engine, a smooth-as-butter e-commerce platform, a one-of-a-kind smartphone, and a truly global social network.
Fast forward to today- Google was born. Apple is in our hearts (and hands). Facebook is prolific, and Amazon is killing it. It is a different era. The technology sector is mature and the world knows it. But guess which sectors got left behind?
Every other sector….technological innovation is still behind in spaces such as healthcare, finance, government, fashion, art.
So how will technological development accelerate in these spaces?
Collaboration amongst industry experts. A cross-pollination amongst industry sector talent will be necessary to move the needle forward. A reduced desire for a centralized “Sillicon Valley” will naturally occur as talent disseminates across different cities. We will start seeing software engineers in Boston working with researchers in the BioTech Space. Or see engineers moving to NYC to work with financial experts in the fintech Space. We will even see disruptions in the govtech space as policy-makers and software developers begin to work more closely together.
Tomorrow’s Silicon Valley is global.
Answered Dec. 2, 2015
To me, Silicon Valley is not a place, it’s more a state of mind and a culture of how things are done. It’s a culture in which people are willing to bypass convention in any area, not be overly biased by why things can’t be done, but rather take the approach, how one might take a shot at it? It is one where people are not afraid of failure but just look at the consequences of success, not the probability of failure. It is more experimental, less planned, more iterative, and evolutionary even as to the goals, let alone the methods. This culture can be replicated in any part of the world, but is discouraged in most places, partly because failure is discouraged, partly because planning predictability and success along predefined pathways is the only way things get funded instead of saying something is just worth attempting. As the stories of Silicon Valley become more prevalent, this style and culture is becoming more pervasive and will grow in other areas, especially as old generations retire and new generations come up with new models. Having said that, there are ecosystems around places like Bangalore and Israel that are starting to start this transformation of culture. More established places like Europe see less of this, unfortunately, even though they have a lot of talent to make this approach possible.
Just by way of example, I want to say, I’ve seen very little radical innovation come out of any large company except for founder-led companies, be they startups or large companies. Walmart didn’t innovate retail, Amazon did. Lockheed and Boeing didn’t innovate space, SpaceX did. GM and VW didn’t innovate electric cars, Tesla did. NBC didn’t do media, YouTube did. IBM, Dell, and HP didn’t do Hadoop or cloud computing, startups did and Amazon did.
Answered Sept. 1, 2016
Unlikely there will be another Silicon Valley. USA has too much going for it. To be able to create a Silicon Valley, you need the following at the minimum:
1.Multi-dimensional skills. Elon Musk is highly versed in many areas — design, business, technological vision, team building. Other engineers and businessmen are generally not well versed in other disciplines.
2.Thinking big (I mean insanely big).
3.Creating an ecosystem where the right people can hang out and discuss.
4.Being tough on people. Expecting a lot from them.
5.Risk-taking early customers willing to take a chance on the first iteration of your product.
6.Mentors — people who have done it before at some level. Jobs had access to Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard.
7.Deep and liquid capital markets. Beyond a certain point, it is only public markets that can fund innovation with billions of dollars.
8.Immigration if needed. Would global talent like to come and work with you? Are you capable of rapidly and easily importing such talent?
Answered April 5, 2017
Silicon Valley is the only Valley. To be very blunt, far and few places will ever be at that level. That being said, there are plenty of cities across the entire US that are up-and-coming and creating their own flavor and still driving smaller exits of $50-$100 million (which there is NOTHING wrong with). We recently relocated to Raleigh, NC to move our company because:
Answered Jan. 5, 2017
Wherever the next Sand Hill road is.
Silicon Valley is tied to its history. Apple in 1976, HP, Fairchild, the IBM Cottle plant in the ’60s, it’s where ICs were born (but not invented). The computer industry started in Silicon Valley in the ’60s and ’70s. I don’t believe another area will ever be the next Silicon Valley, just as no other area has become the next Detroit (for cars) or Pittsburgh (for steel). They’ve become decentralized. The “next” Silicon Valley will happen in another industry (3D printing, robotics, nanotechnology, biotechnology, etc). The centrality of Silicon Valley as a technology hub for software and hardware will fade but continue, just as New York has maintained its centrality for finance and fashion in the US and Hollywood has a hold on movies.
Silicon Valley was the conclusion of San Francisco in the 60s where you have a massive cultural movement that made socially conservative folks uncomfortable. Go look for pictures of Jobs and Wozniak in the early ’70s… they would have been laughed out of any business building outside California. If you want to know where the next center of technology is going to happen, look for a cultural hotspot. The next industry will be where culture makes it. I’m hoping its nanotechnology and I don’t care where (hopefully they’ll revive a rust belt city).
Answered July 5, 2017
There will never be another Silicon Valley, We are just that unique.
Although we are a place of every race, religion and gender.
The Valley’s contributions to civilization include, in part:
• Long distance high-voltage transmission
• Amplifying vacuum tube
• First commercial radio broadcast
• Long distance continuous-wave radio transmissions
• Mobile radio systems development
• Klystron tube and microwave
• Radar
• Electronic measuring devices
• Nuclear induction applications
• X-ray microscope
• Traveling-wave tube development
• Silicon crystal-growing
• Programmable hand-held calculators
• Videotape and VCRs
• Development of the junction transmitter
• Linear accelerators for particle physics research and cancer treatment
• Swept-back aircraft wings
• Nuclear magnetic resonance
• Random access computer storage
• Disk drives
• Integrated circuits
• Planar processes
• Lasers
• Semiconductor large-scale integrated memory
• Silicon gate arrays
• Microprocessors
• Light-emitting diodes (LEDs)
• Personal computers
• Open-heart surgery
• Ink-jet printing
• High resolution aerial photography
• Spacecraft heat shields
• Batch processing of micro-machined devices
• Gene-cloning and gene-splicing
• Video games
• Silicon compilers
• Automated semiconductor manufacturing equipment
• Field programmable gate arrays
• Prodigious advances in artificial limbs and sensory aids
• Robotics
• Genetic engineering
• Satellite technology
• 3-D computing
and a host of other wonders!
There might only be one Silicon Valley but there could be another great place like it where great minds come together to do great things. That includes coming up with your own names.
Answered Feb. 9, 2016
Originally Answered: Where will the next Silicon Valley be?
These Tech hubs – Austin, Dallas, Seattle, Chicago and Miami – are prime environments for real estate investment.
Answered July 20, 2017
Everywhere, at least in America.
Silicon Valley’s culture, at least the good bits, are exportable. One of my missions (which I’ll be announcing in the near future) involve exporting Silicon Valley entrepreneurship and confidence to parts of the United States where many bright people reside but have not developed a global disruption perspective. The long-term goal is to make disruptive innovation and business a nation-wide wave.
Outside of the U.S., I’m seeing India as the top choice. Between their recent reforms, their more transparent common-law-influenced government, and U.S. investments in design and engineering (not raw manufacturing), all paired with their lead in info-tech, they stand a great chance of becoming innovative capitalists.
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