Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City

the magic comes from a few dozen entrepreneurs deciding that the success of the greater startup community is worth their investment of time and energy.

Entrepreneurial leaders are charismatic. People want to be around them and are inspired by them. I don’t believe that people motivate other people; rather they create a context in which others are motivated. Some entrepreneurs are spectacular at creating this context, and when they lead by example, many other entrepreneurs rise to the occasion. Thi

Today, we are in the midst of a massive shift from the hierarchical society that has dominated the industrial era to a networked society that has been emergent throughout the information era.

The idea that people are always more important than institutions is fundamental to creating a healthy startup community.

In the physical world, much of this energy, activity, and innovation occur in small geographic regions, which I call “startup communities.”

This dynamic is analogous to startups—it’s okay to try things that fail, and the startup community must recognize when something isn’t working and move on.

External economies of scale lower certain costs; meanwhile, network effects make co-location more valuable.

Many people approach business as a zero-sum game: There are winners and losers. This is stupid and counterproductive in the context of a startup community. Startup communities are often a tiny fraction of what they could ultimately become. As a result, there is a huge amount of untapped opportunity. Approaching it as a non-zero-sum game is much mor

Emerging companies need certain common inputs—for example, infrastructure, specialized legal and accounting services, suppliers, labor pools with a specialized knowledge base—that reside outside the company. Companies in a common geographic area share the fixed costs of these resources external to the company. As more and more startups in an area c