It seems that Silicon Valley is at least in part fueled by universities, notably Stanford and Berkeley.
So I'd expect a competitor would want to be near universities with a focus and strong record in engineering and technology.
The Next Silicon Valley Will Be in the US Heartland: Steve Case
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Re: The Next Silicon Valley Will Be in the US Heartland: Steve Case
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can argue the "best" point I guess but there are all the large state schools (which can give a very good education if you seek it out), Purdue, Notre Dame, University of Chicago... But probably more around the great lakes than further south.
Purdue is great, but it's in Indiana and the social policies will continue to disincentivize both workers and investors. a quick list of reasons not to locate in Indian: * abortion ban * no renter protection * strict non-compete's allowed * school funding keeps getting worse
Strict non-competes being allowed is probably the only factor that really matters there.
Jurisdictions that favor renters almost universally have higher rents and a poorer experience for normal renters who don't cause damage and pay rent on time. If you compare the average rents in Indiana[0], which is well known to favor the rights of property owners, against some states with roughly comparable population densities that are well known to favor the rights of renters, like Vermont[1] or Delaware[2], you can see that Indiana is only about 80% of the other two.
The near-total ban on abortion in Indiana is misguided and I believe local voters will move in a more moderate direction sooner or later, but you'll find that social matters generally do not hold as much sway as economic matters.
[0]: https://www.rentdata.org/states/indiana/2021
Re: The Next Silicon Valley Will Be in the US Heartland: Steve Case
#63I think the ethos of SV is startups and the notion of building something in your garage and connecting with other like minded people. Now its also BigTech and massive scale of solutions (which are predominately ad driven) and connecting with like minded people to do those things.
I don't think there will be a "next" SV. Just like there isn't a next Motown or various other things borne out of special sets of happenstance. Was there ever a "next" Hollywood?
Re: The Next Silicon Valley Will Be in the US Heartland: Steve Case
#64There 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…
7) diversity (not just about immigrants — age, culture, political, philosophical, work style, gender, ability) has unspoken benefits beyond the ones that are usually touted.
The diversity of Silicon Valley is very enticing not only for companies who just repeat the word as a marketing buzzword while not necessarily comprehending what it gives them (a lot), but also for young engineers, male and female, in their social lives, and having a huge diverse pool of potential partners to meet and mix with is something that appeals to our strongest drives as humans, and no dreary place is going to compete.
It also creates a comfort zone for creative people of all types and backgrounds, not only for their work, but also for their life outside of work and the lives of their family members, some of whom may actually have opinions about where they want to live.
Re: The Next Silicon Valley Will Be in the US Heartland: Steve Case
#65It's already in Shenzhen.
It was going to be, but the CCP seems determined to deprive their innovative companies of oxygen and happy to make state controlled companies the favorites.
Re: The Next Silicon Valley Will Be in the US Heartland: Steve Case
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I don't know that those two universities don't get a lot of respect. I have always heard good things about them, here in my elite coastal bubble. As a counterexample, MIT is not in NYC or SF, and it gets respect. For the universities you mention, maybe the (perceived?) sense of lower respect comes from picking up on outsider's suspicions that a Texas university may draw from the state, and thus may have a higher perc…
Boston is an archetype of the "coastal liberal elite" city in the line of NYC or SF, so clearly it gets respect. ;-)
> people who put tribe and faith ahead of logic and reason
For many things, one man's logic and reason is another's tribe and faith. A red voter type might see blue voter types engage in all sorts of illogical policy behavior that, to the red voter, appears solely grounded in blue tribalism and orthodoxies that might as well be church doctrine.
Re: The Next Silicon Valley Will Be in the US Heartland: Steve Case
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, it doesn't seem to be keeping a lot of companies and people from heading to Texas, especially Austin.
Austin is relatively close to California. Both Texas and California have huge populations. What does Indiana have?
Indianapolis is a three hour drive from Chicago which is the third most populous city in the US. Whereas Austin is over 1,000 miles from SF. (Once you're getting in a plane anyway, 1K miles vs. 2K miles doesn't make much of a difference.)
Re: The Next Silicon Valley Will Be in the US Heartland: Steve Case
#68I think people need to understand the history of Silicon Valley to see why you need an ethos that comes from individuals Not just a cluster of tech companies and VCs, which is already a high bar An area needs a concentration of people made wealthy there, who have to be interested in becoming VCs right there. the state needs the same unenforceability of noncompete laws as california at a bare minimum. dumb things have…
You also need a culture of supporting non-conformists. A culture where children are socialized into believing that things must only be done in a certain way because that's how it's always been done and doing it differently not just makes you immoral but makes you a bad person will invariably reduce the number of kids who will grow up trying to "think differently" when solving problems.
To an extent, but considering how well the Provo/SLC axis is doing in Utah, that doesn't seem to be a necessity.
Re: The Next Silicon Valley Will Be in the US Heartland: Steve Case
#69This has been predicted for decades now, but always misses a key point for SV being so successful. The SF Bay Area is one of the most diverse places to live and work in the US. Your managers, colleagues, and the area are from very different backgrounds, and when you bring together this diverse set of people, you end up creating things that 99% of the world uses. Outside of LA and the NY metro area, diversity drops dr…
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Re: The Next Silicon Valley Will Be in the US Heartland: Steve Case
#70Unless 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…
Born and raised in Ohio, not even in one of the 3 big cities. Child of a non-white immigrant. Grew up being friends with many other children of immigrants who have willingly stayed there. I left because the good tech jobs were on the west coast, not because I felt unwelcome. With crime and homelessness disproportionately increasing in the major coastal cities, I'd seriously consider a move back to the midwest at this…
Well, I am a white guy from the Cleveland area. I do have a good sense of what northeast Ohio is like. I haven't lived there in 15 years, but I do visit several times a year. The amount of negative change in Ohio in that time is staggering. Columbus and a few other parts of the state may be doing well, but much of the state is in decay.
I don't think Ohio is unwelcoming from a people perspective, although around where I grew up is MAGA central, so I am not sure that it is super welcoming to immigrants or people who aren't white and straight. The people are generally friendly when they know you.
The politicians, however, are fairly insane, and since I left the state, they have allowed guns in preschools, outlawed abortion, blocked intracity rail to connect to their major cities (and don't invest in infrastructure beyond sprawl), have continued to hollow out their cities for almost exclusively sprawl building, etc. There is very little emphasis from Ohio policymakers on creating policy and infrastructure to attract people.
One big area that Ohio has cut in recent decades is higher education funding. What is a great way to attract immigrants and startups? Higher education spending. Research universities, in particular, foster and help create startups. This is one of California's secrets. An elite state research university in or near Cleveland would probably be a much better way to invest in the state than what policymakers have been doing.
In short, the people of Ohio are generally friendly if they know you, but the state isn't doing anything to attract immigrants or people from other parts of the country.