Geography Of Entrepreneurship

It’s been an age old understanding that success breeds future success. Once you find a working formula, it will be adopted by those around you.

This could be your peers or your competitors. But small steps toward the final product will be made by all. That’s why ‘guilt by association’ and such sayings are clichés now. If your product or service is profitable, and others follow suit, in the public conscience you are all linked.

The Business & Innovation Hubs

It’s also the reason why there are such places as Silicon Valley and Wall Street. Once a certain area gets associated with success, others will migrate toward it. It’s like a magnetic effect. Hollywood and Nashville have the same draw for those in the movie and music industry. These places are seen as the places and soon home hundreds to thousands of hopefuls.

Why Does The Talent Migrate

There are four accepted theories as to why these migrations happen. First is that they need to be near certain resources. Coal and oil are the most common and widely known resources that would cause a company or employee to move to a new city. Second, the opening of a large firm or factory would create a boom in the local town.

This would cause the third wave of migrations. Wherever there would be new jobs, that would create the need for housing and then retail locations. It would start a snowball effect. Fourth, once an idea has been created, the idea itself will grow and fertilize the areas around it. The subsidiary markets, whether retail or other service industry, will latch onto the idea and make their own niche with it.

Plausible Cause

The technology industry should have made it possible for people to be farther from these natural resources that they used to be tied to. And this is true in many ways. However, for those working in the technology field, they still prefer to be near each other. This hive mentality often comes from wanting to feel like they’re in the ‘know’.

But it’s also about networking. Buddies from different technology companies can go out for drinks after work and talk about their days. One person may have ideas for a project that could help the other. This kind of camaraderie is less likely to happen when they’re working states away from each other.

Why Networking Again?

As we mentioned networking earlier, this is also a key component of migrating talent to one spot. You’re more likely to meet up with an investor at the local bar in Silicon Valley than in say Jacksonville, Florida. It’s natural for these investors to want to be near the pulse of their investments. Plus, once the relationship is forged with the venture capitalist or whomever, where are you going to set up shop? It’s usually within a 10 mile radius of where you started. With so much being risked, venturing out into an unknown geography seems like an unnecessary gamble.

Silicon Valley has been this hub of excitement and productivity for decades in the tech world and it doesn’t seem to be slowing down. No other place on the map says “internet” “technology” or “innovation” louder than Silicon Valley.

That’s why new start-up should, an do, lay down the higher real estate investment to be in that hub. It’s a large undertaking for a start-up, and is usually the largest part of the upstart cost, but that could all pay for itself after the first big break.

This is why it’s important to have a solid foundation before the jump. Things could very well move at lightning speed once you’ve moved to one of these metropolitan centers. Having the right team is essential and picking the right hub is paramount.

Images:

• Globe
• License: Creative Commons image source

Sergeo the author is a known name in the software startup world. He loves blogging on topics related to software and film and media production. He is involved in building Edictive, a film software startup.