Discovering Secrets Outside Silicon Valley

Long before building a business there is an immature, shaky idea that exists.

This initial seed is what Peter Thiel regards as a “secret.” His stance is that one must see something that almost no one else does to be the right person to start a large, successful company.

This led me to think about where one finds secrets, and what state of mind one must be in to have the best chance of coming across one.

It’s well regarded that while you can build a successful (tech) company anywhere, there are certain advantages of building it in a region like Silicon Valley.

However, if Silicon Valley is the right place to build a company, where is the right place to find your secret? Maybe outside the Valley.

Though this wasn’t his intention, one could take Thiel’s comments as evidence to support this perspective:

“Why has so much of our society come to believe there are no hard secrets left? It might start with geography. There are no blank spaces left on the map anymore.”

Maybe it’s that we sit in cafes all day long in Silicon Valley and overhear pitches at the table beside us over and over again. And we’re left feeling that everything is already being done already. If there’s an idea, surely there’s someone (probably in this cafe) who can or will do it. And we shut ourselves out from even believing there is a secret to be found.

Meanwhile, everywhere else, maybe there’s a feeling that “I need to be the one to do this because no one else in my town is thinking the same way I am.” And we fight like hell to find our secret.

“The best place to look for a secret is where no one else is looking.”

It’s well established that the best ideas don’t come when we’re banging our heads against our desks or standing in front of a whiteboard.

Rather, they come when we’re engaged in a passive activity like walking — when creativity spikes a dramatic 60%. When we take walks we see unexpected things, we move (literally) out of our usual space and are exposed to new people, places, and feelings.

Maybe it’s the same way with the space we’re in. We go on walks outside Silicon Valley and hear a wider range of conversations, observe a wider range of activities, and see how technology should and should not fit into a more “normal” everyday life.

Facebook came via secrets unearthed on a college campus in Boston. Twitter was born out of rudimentary dispatch systems in cities like St. Louis. Pinterest came from a bug collection in Des Moines, Iowa.

Secrets live on the fringes. They are waiting to be found in places like Weir, Kansas (population: 686) where a town bank is discovering secrets that no one on Wall Street can.

Maybe discovering a secret outside Silicon Valley, but then actually building — executing on that secret — inside the Valley is the right path to pursue.

We get the best of both worlds: the secret-inducing environment that is needed to start, and then the supportive, dense environment that facilitates so many successful companies.