The Next Silicon Valley Will Be in the US Heartland: Steve Case • Hacker News Board

Re: The Next Silicon Valley Will Be in the US Heartland: Steve Case

#31

Post by pessimizer » Thu, Sep 22, 2022, 2:30 PM UTC

jeffbee wrote: post #27

pyrito wrote: post #17

I think it's really as simple as having a big company hitting a giant IPO that creates wealthy individuals who go on to invest in smaller up and coming startups. E.g. Seattle has Amazon and Microsoft, Bay Area has Meta, Google, etc.

If that were even remotely true then Silicon Valley would already be in Bentonville, Arkansas.

There are a ton of programmers in Bentonville, AR. I know some of them. The needs of Walmart are narrow, so it's not going to be the skunkworks-lousy valley, but for what Walmart does, it creates a community of IT contractors.

Re: The Next Silicon Valley Will Be in the US Heartland: Steve Case

#32

Post by farisjarrah » Thu, Sep 22, 2022, 2:30 PM UTC

streblo wrote: post #21

About 3 years ago I left Silicon Valley after being there for 15 years. I moved to the suburbs outside of another major US city, near where I grew up. I had already been working remote, and especially during the pandemic it felt like a relatively future-proof decision to be outside of the SV network. Frankly, now I'm not so sure I was right. No other place in the US (maybe in the world) has the amount and magnitude o…

The billboards in San Francisco off Hwy 80 and Hwy 101 never cease to surprise me. I'll ask my wife, who was a middle school teacher, what a "Datadog" or "Salesforce" is and she never knows (or cares, which is fair enough). The tech culture is so ingrained that even the non-techies are oblivious to how deeply rooted it is.

Re: The Next Silicon Valley Will Be in the US Heartland: Steve Case

#33

Post by natch » Thu, Sep 22, 2022, 2:31 PM UTC

bena wrote: post #4

You need colleges. You want the next Silicon Valley, pump money into the CS programs of area colleges.

Necessary but not sufficient.

Re: The Next Silicon Valley Will Be in the US Heartland: Steve Case

#34

Post by AlgorithmicTime » Thu, Sep 22, 2022, 2:32 PM UTC

la64710 wrote: post #28

pwthornton wrote: post #26

Unless a lot of areas become a lot more hospitable to immigrants, it is very unlikely that they will become the next Silicon Valley —- or next anything really. When you look at places like Ohio, for instance, that have been stagnating for decades, a huge reason for it is that the population of Ohio was once representative of the country and has increasingly become older and whiter than the general U.S. population. Th…

FTA : I believe that if America loses its way and ceases to be the most innovative, entrepreneurial nation in the world, the most likely cause will be not having an immigration policy that is as welcoming to people as it has been for the past couple of centuries.

I doubt it. Look at the period from 1920-1960. Extremely entrepreneurial, extremely innovative, and tight immigration controls.

The talent is largely already here.

Re: The Next Silicon Valley Will Be in the US Heartland: Steve Case

#35

Post by Demonsult » Thu, Sep 22, 2022, 2:32 PM UTC

Hotelling's law and Nash equilibrium can partially explain why so many "next silicon valleys" haven't panned out. It's also interesting that the valley is in a jurisdiction with such pro-employee laws.

Re: The Next Silicon Valley Will Be in the US Heartland: Steve Case

#36

Post by Nasrudith » Thu, Sep 22, 2022, 2:33 PM UTC

You will never become the next foo by trying to be the next foo. Instead you need to stand upon your unique merits.

The "Silicon Valley of Bar" never works as anything but campaigning to gullible and giving benefits to existing businesses for no real public gain.

Arguing for entitlement to runaway success based off of some misguided notion of equity is even worse (and by definition incoherent). Success being seen as a birthright is a fast way to stagnation and failure, demonstrated time and time again by fallen US industries like steel and automobiles. Success isn't guaranteed even with hard work and connections!

Re: The Next Silicon Valley Will Be in the US Heartland: Steve Case

#37

Post by torstenvl » Thu, Sep 22, 2022, 2:33 PM UTC

bena wrote: post #4

You need colleges. You want the next Silicon Valley, pump money into the CS programs of area colleges.

4-5 of the top 20 CS programs are in the Upper Midwest, depending on whether you count Western Pennsylvania (I personally do — politics are solidly Midwest conservative; manufacturing is a major industry; ethnicity is largely German-American rather than British; religion is largely Catholic and mainline Protestant rather than Quaker and Congregationalist; and so on. Pittsburgh looks and feels more like Columbus than like Philly.)

Re: The Next Silicon Valley Will Be in the US Heartland: Steve Case

#38

Post by lotsofpulp » Thu, Sep 22, 2022, 2:35 PM UTC

tlogan wrote: post #23

There are few reasons why Silicon Valley is successful: 1) weather (no tornados, no super humid days, no snow) 2) proximity of great places (Lake Tahoe, Monterey, Napa valley, …) 3) good universities (Berkeley, standford, UCSF, …) 4) immigrants (especially south asian) are more welcome 5) big companies like Salesforce, Google, Facebook, etc. 6) support network: it is ok to be poor entrepreneur and hassle even you are…

California’s non compete ban and laws protecting personal IP from employer’s claims.

Re: The Next Silicon Valley Will Be in the US Heartland: Steve Case

#39

Post by LanceH » Thu, Sep 22, 2022, 2:35 PM UTC

yardie wrote: post #20

x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And unfortunately, your best universities are not in the heartland and very few in red states. Silicon Valley has the luxury of educational centers, as well as large tech firms that can be used to seed the area with talent they create and attract. You would be hard pressed to find such a confluence of actors in the heartland.

I consider Rice and UT-Austin as two of the best universities in a conservative, red state. But they don't get a lot of respect from coastal elites because they aren't in NYC or SF.

And A&M.

But there is no density in Texas. Dallas, Austin, and Houston are 4 hours apart. There is virtually no synergy between them for a corporation other than existing under the same state laws. If these three were all half the distance from each other, and the weather was mild year round, and they were on the coast, it would be a different story.

Re: The Next Silicon Valley Will Be in the US Heartland: Steve Case

#40

Post by jeffbee » Thu, Sep 22, 2022, 2:36 PM UTC

The objective evidence for Tulsa, Oklahoma having "quite strong momentum" is extremely poor. They are still paying people to move to Tulsa. There are still fewer jobs in Tulsa than there were in 1990, in the same 30 years that employment in Austin has tripled, and employment in Seattle has doubled.

https://tulsaremote.com/