Stop Emulating Silicon Valley – How to Start an Entrepreneurial Revolution (HBR)

The Big Idea: How to Start an Entrepreneurial Revolution

To ignite venture creation and growth, governments need to create an ecosystem that sustains entrepreneurs. Here’s what really works.

1: Stop Emulating Silicon Valley.

The nearly universal ambition of becoming another Silicon Valley sets governments up for frustration and failure. There is little argument that Silicon Valley is the “gold standard” entrepreneurship ecosystem, home to game-changing giants such as Intel, Oracle, Google, eBay, and Apple. The Valley has it all: technology, money, talent, a critical mass of ventures, and a culture that encourages collaborative innovation and tolerates failure. So it is understandable when public leaders throughout the world point to California and say, “I want that.”

This is a must read article for anyone outside of the Bay Area.

How to Avoid the Three Startup Danger Points | Software by Rob

How to Avoid the Three Startup Danger Points

I’ve communicated with hundreds of startup founders over the past three years, and I’ve begun to notice a pattern.

There are three points during the creating of a startup where the founders are most likely to close up shop. I call these the “danger points” and this post looks at how to avoid them.

Point #1: Choosing a Product Idea

There are three types of people: those who understand binary and those who don’t. No, wait…that’s a different blog post.

There are two types of people: those who are impulsive and those who over-analyze decisions. If you’re impulsive don’t worry about this point; you’ll have no clue what it’s about.

This is a pretty apt list of things to consider if you are heading towards a startup or if you are in the middle of one.

Pmarchive – Archive of articles from blog.pmarca.com

Pmarchive

An archive of the best articles from the now sadly defunct blog.pmarca.com

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The Pmarca Guide to Startups

  1. Part 1: Why not to do a startup
  2. Part 2: When the VCs say “no”
  3. Part 3: “But I don’t know any VCs!”
  4. Part 4: The only thing that matters
  5. Part 5: The Moby Dick theory of big companies
  6. Part 6: How much funding is too little? Too much?
  7. Part 7: Why a startup’s initial business plan doesn’t matter that much
  8. Part 8: Hiring, managing, promoting, and firing executives
  9. Part 9: How to hire a professional CEO

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Bonus Startup Essentials

  1. The truth about venture capitalists, Part 1
  2. The truth about venture capitalists, Part 2
  3. The truth about venture capitalists, Part 3
  4. How to hire the best people you’ve ever worked with
  5. Serial entrepreneurs and today’s Silicon Valley
  6. The Psychology of Entrepreneurial Misjudgment, part 1: Biases 1-6
  7. Age and the entrepreneur, part 1: Some data
  8. Luck and the entrepreneur, part 1: The four kinds of luck

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Additional Pmarca Guides

  1. Guide to Personal Productivity
  2. Guide to Career Planning, part 0: Introduction
  3. Guide to Career Planning, part 1: Opportunity
  4. Guide to Career Planning, part 2: Skills and education
  5. Guide to Career Planning, part 3: Where to go and why
  6. Guide to Big Companies, part 1: Turnaround!
  7. Guide to Big Companies, part 2: Retaining great people

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Bonus Awesomeness

  1. Why there’s no such thing as Web 2.0
  2. Top 10 science fiction novelists of the ’00s — so far
  3. Why Ning?
  4. Book of the week: Best book for tech entrepreneurs this year
  5. The three kinds of platforms you meet on the Internet
  6. Music of the week: Three views of the blues, through jazz
  7. Eleven lessons learned about blogging, so far
  8. OK, you’re right, it IS a bubble
  9. Counterpoint: Ben Horowitz on micromanagement
  10. An hour and a half with Barack Obama

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The Long Kiss Goodbye

Before he stopped posting, Marc tantalized readers with a “Coming Soon” list (reprinted below). I was particularly excited about the Guide to High-Tech Startups. Maybe someday. All we can do is hope.

  • Top 10 books for high-tech entrepreneurs

  • Top 10 ways to do personal outsourcing

  • Software — the velvet revolution and the multicore conundrum

  • How to trick out a Typepad blog in 2007

  • Killer Windows Media Center apps for 2007

  • The truth about reporters: a multi-part series

  • The Pmarca Guide to High-Tech Startups: a multi-part series

  • Why Internet advertising is about to get humongous

Some more reading material for you on a Saturday. Don’t get out of the house/office, just read articles all day.