Turns out that, earlier that week, a local startup had decided to shut down and the “wake” was the startup community’s way of showing these young, fragile entrepreneurs that it was okay to fail—that the honor was in trying.

Think of your startup community as a lean startup—one that needs to try lots of experiments, measure the results, and pivot when things aren’t working.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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