During the Tahoe Tech Talk three hour Q&A segment with the panelists, someone in the audience asked about how to create a stronger entrepreneurial community in their city so that it could be “more like Silicon Valley.” After a little banter, Chris Sacca and Dave Morin called me up onto stage to do a short riff on what we’ve done in Boulder and what makes it special. Damon Clinkscales recorded it on his iPhone – the three minute video is embedded below.
The key points are:
- Don’t try to be Silicon Valley (it’s a special place – learn from it – but don’t try to emulate it)
- It takes at least a half dozen people that are committed to provide leadership over 20 years
- You have to do things that engage the entire entrepreneurial community (e.g. TechStars)
- You have to continually get new first time entrepreneurs into the entrepreneurial community
There’s a lot of stuff about this in our new book Do More Faster in case you want to go deeper on this topic.