Brad Feld on Building Entrepreneurial Communities Like Austin
At Tahoe Tech Talk 2010, a question came up during Q&A about building up entrepreneurial communities outside of Silicon Valley. Brad Feld, a well-known venture capitalist in Boulder was asked to come up on stage to share a few of his thoughts.
(video clip shared with Brad’s permission)
Brad essentially made three main points:
- Don’t try to be Silicon Valley.
- You need at least half a dozen leaders to stay consistent over a period of 20 years.
- Engage the entire entrepreneurial community. This includes students, first timers, serial entrepreneurs, etc.
Join us this Wednesday morning downtown at Jo’s Coffee for Open Coffee Austin. We meet up for good coffee, making connections, and conversation centered around building businesses in Austin. We meet on the First Wednesday of each month.
Interesting point about a community needing a core base of leaders over a 20 year period. Many have felt the Austin tech scene has been missing something, but couldn’t quite put our finger on it. This may be one of those things. People like Jimmy Treybig, Pike Powers, and Gerald Youngblood from seedstage.com back in the day don’t seem to be active any longer. It’s mostly an entirely new leadership today.