A couple of weeks ago, serial entrepreneur Micah Baldwin (TechStars mentor, Graphicly founder) gave a talk at a Toronto startup community gathering called Sprout Up. Part of that talk was Micah’s reasons for why “every startup community is the same.” Now, this raised my eyebrow a bit because can we really generalize every startup community into a neat collection of bullet points?
Micah Baldwin’s six reasons:
Every community has talkers and doers.
Every community has haters.
Every startup, no matter where they are, needs a hacker and a hustler.
Every community needs a champion.
It’s about the sum of the parts.
Every community has intrapreneurs.
Looking at those reasons, it looks more like startup communities have some overlapping characteristics as opposed to simply “being the same” as their headline would lead you to believe. The reason I want to draw your attention to is the fourth one – “Every community needs a champion.”
He says that it takes 20 years to really establish a thriving startup community, and much of its success depends on the community champions. These are organizations like Y Combinator and TechStars, and investment firms or individual investors. The people who are putting money into new companies, connecting them with relevant people, and championing the area on the world stage.
Our startup community here in Los Angeles is definitely not 20 years old (sure, you could probably argue this on technicalities, but 20 years ago, our community as it is today most certainly did not exist). Yet, I would posit that we are in a thriving startup community despite the relative youth of our community in LA. The very nature of our “Silicon Beach” debate shows that there are passionate champions in this startup community wanting it to succeed.
What do you think? Do you agree with Micah’s theory?
