What makes Vegas so great as a startup ecosystem?
The dumbest kids at Harvard are smarter than the smartest kids at Hartwick. So why do the bottom third at Harvard drop out? Because of their perception of position within their community.
Relative deprivation theory basically means that you judge yourself compared to those in your community. We don’t base our individual standings compared to the world, but rather compared to our immediate circle or community.
Our brains do this. It’s how we’re wired. It is a phenomenon.
RDT refers to the discontent people feel when they compare their positions to others and realize that they have less of what they believe themselves to be entitled to than those around them. For a more detailed explanation of RDT, watch this great talk by Malcolm Gladwell at Zeitgeist Americas 2013. No really,watch it.
As Malcolm mentions in his talk, the bottom third at Harvard often drop out because they compare themselves to the top third and consider themselves failures. Meanwhile, if that bottom third went to a different school, they would probably be the top students and successfully graduate.
Is it more important to graduate from Harvard?, Or to graduate from somewhere — and then get out there and make something happen?
Here in Vegas, we just like to get it done.
We’ve already graduated
When it comes to what you are doing, e.g. your startup, is it more important to judge yourself compared to the benchmarks in the media or compared to the true impact you can have on your local community ecosystem by getting involved? In Vegas, trying is graduating.
In #VegasTech we don’t consider ourselves “Royals.” We are not Silicon Valley or Alley — we’re Vegas. We’re a city as a startup (we haven’t made it yet). But when you take RDT out of community something amazing happens. Everyone works together for the better good.
We all root for each other
We already know most of our startups will fail, so we say fail up. We all know it is tough to raise money in Vegas because there are very few sources for capital, so we go lean and mean and have fun. We do our best. We certainly hope smarter people than us will move into the valley (like @garyvee) because none of us here think we’ve made it. None of us take ourselves too seriously.
We definitely are serious though. We mean business. We are not doing something slightly differently, we are doing things 10X differently, intentionally. This ecosystem gets what Tony Hsieh is creating. A lot of progress has been made. Things are getting done and it’s engineered to level the playing field. It wipes out the tiers. As Tony says in this video: “Most innovation comes from something outside your industry being applied to your own,” and he is trying to remove the bias of people who don’t want to talk and share with each other.
Take RDT out of a startup community and the “students” get to focus on what really matters to make it in the real world. Confidence, motivation and self efficacy.
We don’t think our local startup ecosystem has top and bottom thirds.No one is at the bottom of a hierarchy here. We all want everyone to make it, we all support each other and we learn from each other’s mistakes instead of judging.
Is that happiness?
If it isn't, it certainly is making a lot of people here happier.
Come see that happiness in action or just come for a hug. You’ll see a community that jumps in, helps out and does more than just imagine a better world.
