
Silicon Valley is Hollywood for Startups - g0atbutt
http://thestartupfoundry.com/2011/02/21/silicon-valley-is-hollywood-for-startups/
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alexophile
>I watched Social Network for the second time today, and it got me thinking.
Entrepreneurs are no different than struggling actors.

Didn't we already collectively agree that the events depicted in the Social
Network were more Hollywood than Silicon Valley?

Not that I totally disagree with the comparison, I've made it myself as
recently as yesterday, but it's not exactly a bad thing. There was a time when
Hollywood was making a lot of good films. But those films brought in money,
and money brought in vanity and all that other nastiness. There's certainly
plenty of money bouncing around SV, but the fame is a bit more self-contained.
If you move to the valley and send a letter home to your mom about how you
bumped into Fred Wilson in a coffee shop, she would probably not run off to
tell all her friends about it.

If the worst thing you can say about the valley is that everybody there wants
to build something great and is willing to risk a lot to make an effort at it,
that sounds like a fantastic environment.

~~~
muhfuhkuh
"If you move to the valley and send a letter home to your mom about how you
bumped into Fred Wilson in a coffee shop, she would probably not run off to
tell all her friends about it."

Yeah, but Fred Wilson is the Silicon Valley equivalent of a Harvey Weinstein.
And, while I'm sure some people know who the Weinsteins are, they're not as
famous as, say, Tom Hanks.

Ask your random sample who Steve Jobs is. Then, you'll get some traction. He
would be the SV equivalent of Stephen Spielberg. Or, perhaps Bill Gates or
Michael Dell, the respective George Lucas and Robert Zemeckis equivalents the
tech world.

~~~
alexophile
Tom Hanks is a talented actor that went on to produce/direct - I think a very
fair comparison would be someone like Paul Buchheit. I'm not going to go
around asking, but I think it's safe to assume my sample would have no idea
who he is.

That being said, the point I was trying to make is that you can become very
successful in SV and have nobody outside of the tech community know your name
- your product is your product. In Hollywood, your product is _you_ , success
is, by definition, corellated with fame.

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zeemonkee
\- crushing conformity ? check.

\- love of me-too and sequels ? check.

\- living off the glory days of the past ? check.

\- patronage and network trump talent and originality ? check.

\- overwhelming sense of self-importance ? check.

\- lack of common sense economics ? check.

Maybe Silicon Valley is Hollywood for startups after all.

~~~
j_baker
\- Lots of creativity? Check.

\- A ton of talent available to those that know how to find it and care for
it? Check.

\- A vibrant hacker community like nowhere else? Check.

\- A vibrant entrepreneurial community like nowhere else? Check.

Seriously, did Silicon Valley step on your mother's grave or something? You
sound like Oscar Wilde's definition of "cynic": someone who knows the cost of
everything and the value of nothing.

~~~
zeemonkee
> Seriously, did Silicon Valley step on your mother's grave or something? You
> sound like Oscar Wilde's definition of "cynic": someone who knows the cost
> of everything and the value of nothing.

Not bad going, two ad-hominems and not a single rebuttal of my arguments.

Oh, and my mother is alive and well, thank you.

~~~
j_baker
You're right, I'm not saying that these don't happen. I'm saying that you're
focusing on all the things that are wrong with the valley and ignoring all the
good things about it. That's no better than being one of the people who pick
out all the good and ignore the bad.

Silicon Valley _is_ a good place to live and work. Is it overhyped? Sure. But
that by itself doesn't make it a bad place.

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rheide
Indeed, things that are not possible anywhere else seem to be possible in
Silicon Valley. Having visited there myself I also found it a unique and
interesting place. Having said that, the real world is not Silicon Valley. And
even in Hollywood there's a lot of famous actors who only gained fame for one
role and then disappeared, never to be seen again. I wonder if IT is similar
in that way as well.

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rflrob
> What other place can you get a more dramatic scene when you finally tell
> your parents: “Mom, Dad: I’ve decided to quit school & work, and move to
> hollywood to pursue my lifelong dream of becoming an actor”. Change
> Hollywood with “Chicago, New York, London, Tokyo, Paris” and it just doesn’t
> have the same effect.

I would argue that New York does have nearly the same cachet for actors as
Hollywood. Just because you're going to become an actor doesn't mean you're
going to do film or TV. Chicago's Second City has also helped develop the
careers of lots of famous comedians. (I know London has a thriving theater
scene as well, but can any Brits comment on whether going to London to become
an actor is a "thing" in the UK?)

What this metaphor might mean for startups is that there may be room for
another startup hub or two, although with a different focus from Silicon
Valley (perhaps non-web?), but probably not more than one or two.

~~~
barry-cotter
_but can any Brits comment on whether going to London to become an actor is a
"thing" in the UK?_

I'm Irish, not a Brit, but if you want to do more or less _anything_
seriously, at a top level, you head to London. This sucking vortex of a Queen
City was attracting about 10% of every generation to it in the _1850s_.

Every other city in the British Isles is an also ran, whether you are looking
at culture, politics, finance... the list goes on.

~~~
zeemonkee
I agree, it's one of those things that really hurts the UK as a whole - and
it's much worse than the 1850s, when you had much stronger regional economies
(think Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow....)

It hurts the South-East because it puts the infrastructure under enormous
strain and property prices beyond the reach of mere mortals, while draining
the rest of the UK of its talented young.

This is one thing I think the Germans do right - a much more culturally,
economically and politically balanced nation (even taking the East-West divide
into account).

~~~
barry-cotter
_I agree, it's one of those things that really hurts the UK as a whole_

I dunno, the agglomeration/network effects could easily enough make up for
that, and people can leave London once it's obvious they're not going to _make
it_ , having built up their human capital faster than they could have anywhere
else, and being able to command London salaries on provincial living costs.

 _It hurts the South-East because it puts the infrastructure under enormous
strain and property prices beyond the reach of mere mortals, while draining
the rest of the UK of its talented young._

If they wanted to make housing affordable, whether rented or to own they could
get rid of the green belt, or encourage much denser housing. The
infrastructure problems could be solved by application of sufficient money and
compulsory purchase, though one would need to _massively_ streamline the
current procedures on that, and on planning. If China can build subways with
stations that open in fields, so could London.

As to the talented young, they speak English, if they weren't going to London
it's very likely they'd be going to the States.

 _This is one thing I think the Germans do right - a much more culturally,
economically and politically balanced nation_

Never a matter of policy. Germany was the belated nation and it's multiple
centres are a consequence of late unification and being split in half and made
more federal in power structure by the conquerors. (I exaggerate the German
lack of agency in the choice of West German state structure)

~~~
zeemonkee
> If they wanted to make housing affordable, whether rented or to own they
> could get rid of the green belt, or encourage much denser housing. The
> infrastructure problems could be solved by application of sufficient money
> and compulsory purchase, though one would need to massively streamline the
> current procedures on that, and on planning. If China can build subways with
> stations that open in fields, so could London.

So to add to infrastructure strain, we'd have huge environmental damage.

> As to the talented young, they speak English, if they weren't going to
> London it's very likely they'd be going to the States.

Maybe. There are significant immigration barriers to that. The very talented,
sure, but not your average educated IT guy (for example).

> Never a matter of policy. Germany was the belated nation and it's multiple
> centres are a consequence of late unification and being split in half and
> made more federal in power structure by the conquerors. (I exaggerate the
> German lack of agency in the choice of West German state structure)

Never said it was a matter of policy, more, as you say, historical
happenstance.

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rokhayakebe
Actually it is different. Using your analogy the actor is the programmer. Most
of the time in Hollywood the actor matters more than the product. Also as an
actor you are trying to get a part in someone else's product. So you need to
be where the product owner is.

As a programmer, you own the product. Noone needs to know you, and you product
could be very famous without anyone knowing you.

As an example take the movie SALT. It is quite famous. I know the actors. I do
not know the name of the producer or writer. That would be the programmer.

My point is, programmers do not need SV as much as actors need HW. Programmers
are writers, and producers. You can produce a movie in your basement, and
distribute it on Youtube for free. If enough people like it, you can get
funding to do a more polished, cinematic version of it.

~~~
chipsy
The actors of SV are entrepreneurs and VCs. Think of all the "color" you get
from TC and Gawker - it's basically identical to Hollywood paparazzi.

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Synthetase
The author's premise is flawed.

I would argue that New York and DC are extremely important as well. Centers of
finance and government? Beijing and Shanghai may soon become quite influential
so I would hold off on making judgments. They come off as self-congratulatory
and insular.

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orky56
I think the comparison can go much further. If you want to bootstrap, then the
high rent and other issues make the valley less attractive. If you want to
make a low-budget indie flick, you are better off with no-name actors and
emphasize the artistic qualities.

So essentially, this comparison is not as patronizing as the article suggests.
Rather it exposes some of the flaws. Let's just hope the valley doesn't get as
full of themselves as Hollywood does and misses the warning signs when things
start to change.

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ziadbc
Hollywood controls the movie and TV distribution, so if you don't play their
game, good luck getting on TV or in the theaters.

In Silicon Valley however, you can still win without playing the insular game,
and paradoxically it might end up making you more successful.

I was always interested in startups because it seemed a path to 'doing your
own thing' and not being beholden to 'the man.' It's funny that people have
now come to think of it in the complete opposite way.

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ChuckMcM
Sorry but this was an old joke in 1995, the joke went:

In Hollywood you can walk up to anyone and ask "How's your screenplay coming?"
and they will look at you shocked and ask "How did you know I was working on a
screenplay?" In Silicon Valley you can walk up to anyone and say "How's your
business plan coming?" and they will look at you shocked and ask "How did you
know I was working on a business plan?"

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waterlesscloud
So what's the silicon valley equivalent of American Film Market?

AFM is where all the lesser films get sold to distributors around the world,
in a process that's very focused on commercial value.

In the boom times, producers could famously sell rights to a film that existed
as nothing more than a mocked-up poster.

Wait...maybe y-combinator is afm?

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j_baker
On the plus side, I now have one incentive to become a manager: the ability to
say "You'll never work in this town again!" when I fire someone.

Oh well, I'll just have to bide my time until then demanding a bigger trailer.

~~~
ardit33
Oh, it works both ways.

I have seen more managers not getting hired, because they ex-employees would
not recommend them.

Bad managers usually leave a trail of bad rep, and at some points it catches
up with them (usually when employers move on and spread out to other
companies).

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g0atbutt
I think Robbie does a great job acknowledging that you can make it in other
cities, while pointing out that there is something special about the valley.

