Startup culture needs to let go of Silicon Valley

This week I was a panellist (and first time attendee) at Southstart, a startup conference in my home town of Adelaide. The panel was about the challenges of marketplaces and my current role at Expert360 gave me some good stories to tell. But it was the following panel on the schedule that really triggered something in me. It presented the final straw on a pile that has been building for months and resulted in this blog post.

One of the panellists, Monica Wulff, of the Startup Muster reflected on the plight of cities trying to foster startup cultures (and Adelaide is certainly one). She spoke of a town in regional Australia and said:

“Wagga Wagga was an agriculture hub and now it’s becoming an agri-tech hub; cities need to build on their strengths.”

Startup cities like Adelaide and Wagga Wagga are often teaming with folks who idolise Silicon Valley. And you’ve probably seen some of the copy-cat names involving the word “silicon” — Silicon Beach, Silicon Roundabout and Silicon Flatiron are just a few examples.

Silicon Valley is a special place, no doubt. It has been home to so many of the great tech companies. Go for a drive around Mountain View or Palo Alto and you’ll be looking upon the cafes, bars and garages that spawned the likes of Apple, Google and Facebook.

But people are quick to forget the special set of circumstances that made Silicon Valley what it is today.

The valley owes its success to the origins of the diode and the transistor (see Shockley) and the company that fostered the eventual founders of HP, Intel and AMD — Fairchild.

And so began a whirlwind of hardware companies. Inevitably, the focus eventually moved to software companies and then with the stunning rise of the Internet and smart phones, cloud and mobile became the main.

Years later, the valley has been home to probably thousands of startups and hundreds of VCs. So you can see why so many aspirational cities want to copy it.

When you start to peer behind the curtain, though, another story emerges. The media will have you believe that startup founders are royalty; superstars and celebrities worthy of our worship. Don’t get me wrong, successful entrepreneurs have my respect and awe but things on the inside of startups are rarely what the media would have us believe. Silicon Valley is folklore.

Look beyond the startups themselves and yet another image becomes clear. The growing divide between the have’s and the have-nots. Real estate in San Francisco is among the most expensive in the world and homelessness is rife.

Do a Google search for “diversity in tech” or “sexual harassment in the valley” and you will be presented with dozens of accounts of misogyny and sexism among investors and entrepreneurs. Travis Kalanick resigned as CEO after multiple sexual harassment allegations of key staff at Uber and even 500 Startups demi-god, Dave McLure has publicly admitted that he is (or has been) a creep. And this problem is only just starting to rear its ugly head.

So, for all its success, Silicon Valley seems, at least on some levels to represent so many of the things I hate. And certainly the things that modern startup cultures should avoid like the plague.

The next evolution of businesses will need to think vastly differently to the tech giants that have come before them. They will need to be conscious and inclusive. Entrepreneurs can no longer just consider the humans for whom they build great products but instead invest deeply in the connection between people and their technology — including the ones that don’t even use it directly. Humans don’t just use the systems we build, they are a part of them.

The new generation of entrepreneurs need to be humble and accessible. They need to swap out the ridiculous Silicon Valley folklore and founder origin stories for open, honest accounts of their failures as well as successes. To inspire other entrepreneurs, especially women, we have to drop the bravado and the bullshit.

But mostly, the companies in our future will no longer be about tech. Tech has become like concrete or steel. Every builder uses it. Its nothing special. Its what you do with technology that is important. The Silicon Valley culture, while very special has had its day. Startup cities should find their own path if they want to succeed.