There’s frequent discussion here on Silicon Prairie News and among the entrepreneurs and startups this publication covers regarding the idea of the entrepreneurial ecosystem.

How do you foster one? What are its essential elements? How does what we have here in the Midwest measure up to other ecosystems?

A good percentage of the time, that conversation turns at some point to Silicon Valley, the unquestioned gold standard for entrepreneurial ecosystems.

Thanks to our sponsor

Become an SPN sponsor »
Meet our sponsors »

Now, among people from these parts, the topic of Silicon Valley’s ecosystem and its relationship to entrepreneurial activity here can be a hot-button issue. There’s an array of opinions on the subject as wide — and, occasionally, colorful — as the Prairie itself. But to be clear, this post is not an attempt to tackle those issues.

Rather, it’s a heads up regarding an enlightening series of stories by Laura Sydell that ran earlier this month on National Public Radio‘s Morning Edition. Because as people work to build startups and an ecosystem hospitable to them in the Midwest, it can’t hurt to be familiar with the history behind another startup ecosystem. 

Called “Starting Up: Silicon Valley’s Origins“, Sydell’s series is broken into three parts, each of which are 7-8 minutes in duration. Below are links to each installment and short snippets of the insights contained therein.

Part 1 – A Rare Mix Created Silicon Valley’s Startup Culture

• Sydell outlines four ingredients that were essential to the rise of Silicon Valley: an abundance of brilliant scientists, acceptance of the notion that brilliant people should start their own business, money and a break from the East Coast mentality regarding venture capital. 
• Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce founded Intel in 1968. The company, of course, went on to flourish. But Moore says he believes the computer revolution might have taken longer if not for the duo’s willigness to break off from their previous company. “If we stayed at Shockley,” Moore says, “we never would have made the radical kind of changes we were able to make by leaving and starting over.”
• Even in the infancy of tech startups, conferences were apparently an important part of the process. Stanford historian Leslie Berlin points to a 1969 conference for semiconductor companies. “More than 1,000 people attended a seminar called something like Startup Companies: The Engineer Becomes Entrepreneur,” Berlin says. “They were sitting in the aisles. They were having it broadcast on closed-captioned TV.”

Part 2 – America’s Magnet For Innovation, And Investments

• The second installment examines how the birth of modern venture capital mirrored the development of tech. At first, the former was plodding. Says the historian Berlin: “They had a hard time finding people who were willing to take it, because it sounded so shady. Wait a second. These people want to just give me money? Why?” Safe to say, that’s probably not a problem that plagues VCs much any more.
• Just as Moore and Noyce had to take the risk of leaving their company to accelerate their innovations, investors had to accept an new and unfamiliar risks in funding tech companies, which also sped up progress. UC Davis professor Martin Kenney says VC investment “brought new technologies forward that may have come about, but certainly would have taken much longer. It also gave an opportunity to brilliant engineers and entrepreneurs to actualize their technological dreams.”

Part 3 – Intel Legends Moore and Grove: Making It Last

• In the final installment of the series, Sydell catches up with Moore, the Intel cofounder, and Andy Grove, the company’s onetime CEO and its first hire. Grove recalls Intel’s humble beginnings and ability to weather early struggles. “Every pestilence that could kill a microchip hit it,” he says. “We had no idea what we were doing. … And we were a schlocky little outfit of 50 people.”
• Grove takes a stance on the exit strategy that clashes with most people’s notions of it today. “And I really don’t have much respect for the people live their lives motivated by an exit strategy existing and being performed,” Grove said. “There was no option that we were trained in.”

Credits: Screenshot from npr.org.