TechLife: Is Silicon Valley Really All That Different?
By Kamla Bhatt • Jun 7th, 2008Category: Diaspora, Entrepreneur Interviews, Start-ups, TechLife - Financial Express, Technology, Venture Capital
“Is Silicon Valley really all that different?”" wondered an American entrepreneur recently. His question caught me by surprise considering he was born and brought up right here in the San Francisco bay area. What was surprising is he thought the ecosystem and the ability to do startups, raise money, succeed or fail were available in other parts of the world. That is when I realized that many folks who live in the valley might not see how lucky the really are. I think you only realize how different the valley is when you go away from here and that is when it hits you. For instance, last year Arun Sarin used the same term “how lucky you are to live here.” There was a certain nostalgic tinge to Sarin’s voice when he said that to a roomful of IIT alumni at the Santa Clara convention center. Having studied, worked and lived in Silicon Valley for close to 20 years Sarin has a deep understanding and appreciation for how different Silicon Valley is.
In this week’s TechLife column in Financial Express I tried to look at why Silicon Valley is different from the perspective of three entrepreneurs. Brij Singh is the CEO of MessageDance, and relocated to the valley a few years ago to work and in the process discovered that he had been bitten by the entrepreneurship bug. Rahul Thathoo and Suchit Agarwal graduated from an engineering college in Allahabad, India, where they also created their first project that they sold off for a nice, tidy amount. They both relocated to the San Francisco bay area to study at two different schools and managed to cash in on the Facebook frenzy. Rahul recently graduated from Stanford and Suchit is at UC, Santa Cruz. (There is an error in the article where it was mentioned that Suchit is at Cal Berkley.) The recently launched their startup called Internwaala. The aim was to find out what they thought was different about the valley, the ecosytem, the ability to create and fail or succeed companies. All three entrepreneurs are originally from India.
You can read the article the article here. Let me know your thoughts about what you think. What do you find missing in your eco-system?
Technorati Tags: techlife,silicon valley,message dance,interwaala,social media,technology,ideas,startups
Kamla Bhatt is the host and producer of an Internet Radio show where listeners can find stories about the new and emerging India and the global Indian community. As a pioneer of 'internet radio' format in India Kamla started her first show News about India, followed by TalkNewsIndia in 2005. In 2006 she premiered her new show: The Kamla Bhatt Show: Life, People and Ideas. 
Kamla,
Excellent article.
World will be better off if we can have couple of more hubs like Silicon Valley. I am sure there will be interesting places in coming years (especially in few cities of Israel, China, Russia and India).
Silicon Valley will always be unique in much the same way as Hollywood and Wall Street are unique.
As someone rightly said - its more of a state of mind than a place. I hope more cities will try to copy the “state of mind” than the place itself.
Brij
Thanks Brij!
I think you put it right: it is the state of mind…very difficult to replicate it easily.
Best of luck with your startup.
Kamla