Browse > Home / Blog / Blog article: Did you know? Most VC deals are done OUTSIDE of Silicon Valley?

Did you know? Most VC deals are done OUTSIDE of Silicon Valley?

October 19, 2007

Has anyone ever heard of the internet? I hear it is changing things, making location not as important. Fred Wilson commented on a meme that Paul Graham started titled, “Houston can kill your startup!“ Fred’s point? More than two thirds of all venture capital dollars are spent on non-Silicon Valley startups. Randall Stross with the New York Times suggested that more than half of all Web 2.0 deals were outside of the bay area. Fred points out of the three biggest deals done during the past three years, Skype, MySpace and YouTube, only one of them was from the Valley.

I love the bay area and to a lesser extent Silicon Valley, but I realize that entrepreneurship is going global. The internet, in all of its Web 2.0 glory, is removing the geographic barriers that have held back entrepreneurs, from places like Houston, for years. There was a time when smug programmers sitting on Market Street could be sure they were on the bleeding edge of whatever they were working on. Today they better look over their shoulders because there are thousands of smart, talented and connected people all over the world - from Bangalore to Beijing to Baltimore. Its the internet stupid ~ get on, or get run over…

Written by Alexander Muse · Filed Under Blog 

Comments

One Response to “Did you know? Most VC deals are done OUTSIDE of Silicon Valley?”

  1. Andrew Fife Says:
    October 21st, 2007 at 9:30 pm

    Alex:

    RE: smug cutting edge programmers on Market Street…

    Did you mean University Avenue? ;)

    Also, while I haven’t read Paul Graham or Fred Wilson’s posts, its seems to me that simply tracking the returns or startups in various geographies would settle the Silicon Valley vs. The World debate once and for all.

    -Andrew

Leave a Reply