After my initial notes (part I), the importance of culture (part II), the recipe (part III) in the Rainforest by Hwang and Horowitt, here are my final notes about venture capital. It may indeed be their best chapter, even if the topic has produced probably hundreds of books and thousands of articles… Their (apparent) bias as venture capitalists is only apparent. Their description is close to what I experienced but I may be biased too!
The subtitle of the chapter is “Big V, Little C” and their quote to begin the chapter is “if you want to make money, do private equity. If you want to have fun, do venture capital”. They then borrow to AnnaLee Saxenian: “In Boston it was the entrepreneurs who dressed nicely and showed up on time to impress the investors. In Silicon Valley it was the opposite.” […] “In other words, the venture – that is the startup – is always more important than the capital, with a Big V and a Little C.” [Pages 218-21]
They explain why investing in the seed and early stage is costly for venture capitalists. “It’s better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price. […] Investing earlier in a deal must be counter-balanced by a strong potential of a massively disproportionate payout at the end. Otherwise, it is simply not worth the risk. […] Lowered transaction costs due to trust and social norms make high-risk seed-stage and early-stage venture capital more profitable [in Silicon Valley].” [Pages 228-29]
In other areas, subsidized capital plays a role. But it does not mean VC should not be understood: “There are two ways to build a venture fund. One takes as little as thirty minutes to learn. The other can take twenty years or more. The short course is to learn the formal legal structuring and financial processes of a typical venture fund. […] the more difficult and time-consuming course is to learn the human behavioral dynamics that happen in and around venture funds. […] Questions such as:
– how do you treat others in situations where mistakes and failures happen almost daily?
– how to build a reputation for trust, candor and integrity when millions of dollars are at stake?
– what type of value can you provide an entrepreneur who probably knows far more about the business than you do?
– how do you actively listen to an entrepreneur, and then see beyond their words to the true prospects of a company?
– how do you know when a CEO is not fit to run a company anymore?
– how do you help a tiny company build life-or-death relationships with huge, powerful customers or strategic partners?”
It reminds me what I learnt 20 years ago: it takes 5 years and $10M to make an investor.
The authors conclude their chapter with marvelous documentary SomethingVentured: “[VCs]’re working really hard, they’re very bright, they’re working together, and they’re collaborating. And there’s a lot of fun involved in achieving things together as a group. So I don’t think you can underestimate how much fun the people… had doing what they did. I think they’re extremely proud, but when they talk about these stories, they’re laughing, they’re smiling. There’s just this excitement and energy about building something.” [Page 242]
After my initial notes (part I) and the importance of culture (part II) in the Rainforest by Hwang and Horowitt, here are my new notes about their recipe to build efficient ecosystems for entrepreneurial innovation. I will finish with a part IV about venture capital.
Again the authors remind us that “innovation is chaotic, serendipitous and uncontrollable, so processes that are linear and controlled are rarely self-sustaining. In contrast, what we strive for in a Rainforest is a system that yields immense impact, is low-cost, and generates internal sustainability. The only possible way to achieve these goals is to build a community of innovators where transaction costs have been reduced through the creation of trust, social norms, connectivity and diversity.” [Page 183]
So their recipe is not so much a recipe as a cure. In fact they say “rather than thinking like macroeconomists, to change behavior, we must think like psychiatrists […] We build rainforests by shaping the outward behavior of innovators. Over time, those behaviors can create changes in attitude, and eventually, the changes in attitude can lead to change in beliefs”. [Page 200-1]
In the recipe [pages 194-200], there is Hardware made of 4 “P”s: People, Professional, (i.e. institutions), Physical (i.e. infrastructure) and Policy. Hardware is necessary but not sufficient. There is also Software, with 5 pillars, Diversity, Extra-Rational Motivations, Social Trust, Rules (see my previous post) and Interpretation of the Rules. The Keystones will make all this possible.
The Rainforest canvas may be a helpful tool to assess the situation of an ecosystem in its physical and cultural components:
About Role Models, they have the interesting Porsche principle. “This principle holds that one of the greatest motivators for professors or graduate students on campus to start new companies is when one of their colleagues drives up in a new Porsche after selling their startup”. [Page 210] To be honest, today, at EPFL and probably elsewhere, I would call it the Tesla principle… (see my previous post…The University-based Startup Porsche Principle. Or is it the Tesla Principle?)
In their epilogue, the authors explain that “Perhaps, instead of fighting the chaos, we need to become more comfortable with it. Perhaps we just need a better map. The Rules of the Rainforest provide a useful map – one that shows the way to balance the freedom of chaos with the beauty of collaboration. […] It requires a ‘joyful participation’ in the ups and downs, the mistakes and the failures that are inevitable. Thus, love is like a solution to chaos. ” [page 280] They use a magnificent quotation from Richard Feynman to whom a student asked to write a message to his mother so that she would be interested in science. Here it is: “Tell your son to stop trying to fill your head with science – for to fill your hear with love is enough. Richard Feynman (the man you watched on BBC ‘Horizon'”.
Here is a slideshare presentation by the authors, which beautifully summarizes their vision.
After my introductory post about The Rainforest – The Secret to Building the Next Silicon Valley by Victor W. Hwang and Greg Horowitt, which focused on the importance of trust, here is a second piece about culture. The final part will describe how the authors claim they know the recipe to build rainforests. What is remarkable with the Rainforest is the ambition to explain that innovation is mostly cultural so that at the micro-level it cannot really be engineered, but at the macro-level rainforests can be built. I am not sure the authors are right, but the effort is really to be recognized.
One lesson of the Rainforest is that outcomes cannot be engineered. […] Serendipity itself cannot be engineered but an environment that is conducive to serendipity can be. [Page 65]
In their chapter 3 about People, they begin with Keystones, not Entrepreneurs. “What defines a Keystone? Over the years, we have observed certain individuals practicing a unique manner of human interaction that is critical to the growth of entrepreneurial innovation. […] These people are usually missing, or at least too scarce, in almost all regions that have failed at generating significant amounts of entrepreneurial innovation.” [Page 71]
These people are integrative, influential and impactful, they are brokers of social trust (by contrast to entrepreneurs who are people who absorb information, learn from practice and seek opportunities). “The San Francisco Bay Area has a vastly higher percentage of people who are involved in multiple firms. 4.5% of the actors counted in the Bay Area were involved in three or more startups, compared to 2.9% in Boston, 2% in San Diego, […] 1.2% in Austin […] 0.7% in Portland. […] The bay Area has a significantly higher share of individuals who are extremely connected and contribute to the growth of multiple startup ventures”. [Page 74]
The authors also show the diversity of psychologies, the diversity of backgrounds in people which are still connected and work together. “We see these unconscious behaviors at work with innovators everywhere in the world. Scientists versus entrepreneurs. Startups versus large corporations. Investors versus investees. These tribal conflicts can be obstacles to the development of Rainforests.” [Page 109] All the more that: “Similarly the process of building a startup company is one in which people must often rely on gut-level decision-making. Entrepreneurial innovation, by its nature, is virtually a never-ending series of educated guesses. Almost every decision is based substantially incomplete information.” [Page 106]
America is the building of a society not burdened by historical tribes. […] They are less chained to the past. Instead Americans tend to be identified by self-reliance. […] People still run to California today. It is commonly regarded as the land of pioneers, nonconformists, artists, and rebels. [Page 116] Culture is critical to the way economic systems function because it provides the rules of engagement between people that hopefully can maximize their collective well-being. [Page 118] The authors are not naïve but claim that all these people need to find the right balance. A venture capitalist is caught between trying to own as much of a company as possible and trying to leave enough equity in the hands of the entrepreneurial team to keep them fully incentivized. […] A VC wants to preserve a reputation. [Page 119] Innovative behavior is not driven by rational maximization. There are in fact other forces, which can be called extra-rational: competition, altruism, adventure, discovery, creativity, meaning, concern.
Here I cannot avoid mentioning the great (counter-)example of Orson Welles about the Scorpio and the Turtle… Hopefully nature is not everything, culture matters.
One mistake of policy makers is to underestimate these extra-rational motivations. “Governments and corporations often try to incentivize innovation by focusing on financial mechanisms, such as tax breaks, subsidies, grants and loans. But overall, this strategy has been poor. They cannot be only the ends in themselves.” [Page 127]
Traditional incentives, benefits and costs: [Page 124] Benefits:
Some possibility of making more money Costs
Sacrifice a stable income and career perhaps forever
Risk social disapproval from family, friends, potential spouses
Difficulty and fear of working with strangers outside conventional circles of trust, culture, ethnicity, language
Difficulty and extra effort in communicating effectively
Huge investment of time, effort, stress
Possibility of losing everything (depending on laws, regarding bankruptcy, partnerships, etc.)
Rainforest incentives, benefits and costs: [Page 126] Benefits:
Perceived and possibly real opportunity of making more money (following role models that have validated the path already)
Joy of discovery, novelty, adventure, creativity, passion
Social approval (as a peer member of a community of innovators)
Joy of friendship, sharing, love working on a team, building new trust, common values and goals
Fulfillment from the possibility of making a difference in society, leaving a legacy for future generations
Thrill of competition
Freedom and independence Costs
Little social punishment, often encouragement, from family and friends for taking a worthwhile risk
Some anxiety from meeting new people, but offset by the joy of making new friendships
Huge investment of time, effort, and stress, but viewed in a neutral or even positive light because pursuing a personal passion
Little risk of losing everything because new opportunities emerge in the process of experimentation
Much lower probability of failure from a broad community of fellow innovators.
And the authors claim what are needed are 7 rules [Page 156]: – Break the rules and dream
– Open doors and listen
– Trust and be trusted
– Experiment and iterate together
– Seek fairness, not advantage.
– Err, fail and persist.
– Pay it forward.
People usually think of Silicon Valley as an anomaly in the otherwise “normal” history of the world, but what if we reversed that proposition? What if we envisioned Silicon Valley as the natural endpoint of a 50,000-year story? Perhaps it could be the latest stage in the evolution of human society, from a culture based on tribes to a culture based on pragmatic individuals. [page 152]
I must thank here first Bogdan Ceobanu from the European Commission. After spending a few hours discussing the challenges (and opportunities) of innovation in Europe, he sent me his copy of The Rainforest – The Secret to Building the Next Silicon Valley by Victor W. Hwang and Greg Horowitt. Bogdan is one of the leading voices behind Startup Europe. Thanks 🙂
There may be nothing really new in this book about ecosystems, but the messages are strong and clear. You may need an infrastructure, but without culture, nothing will happen, no innovation will emerge. I might write a few posts about this book as I just began reading it recently. And as usual, here are my notes / extracts.
Despite hundreds of books and thousands of papers on the subject, real-world innovation is little understood. […] Having the right ingredients will not necessarily result in successful innovation. You need to prepare those raw ingredients, combining them in just the right way. […] We argue that the two pillars of innovation’s conventional wisdom – free markets and clusters – are unable to provide comprehensive answers to the mystery of systemic innovation. [Pages 18-20]
Funnily enough, I gave my own recipe in 2007: “Two main ingredients are needed, rich people and nerds; this has been said already. Do not add any bureaucracy, do not add concrete. In order to attract and keep enough nerds, there is a need for a large and nice plate. A university is a good choice. But it must not be a university like any other; it must be a superb university. There are some; a few are being built from scratch. It needs a unique personality, and it needs to be creative. Not only on its campus, but also in its surroundings, so that the ingredients feel comfortable in the plate. They should be fresh, i.e. they should be young and dynamic. Young and dynamic people are the founders of start-ups. Graham also mentions liberal environments, which, he claims, tolerate strange and brilliant individuals. Then the ingredients have to be put in the oven for a very long time. Silicon Valley began in 1957, Silicon Fen in 1960. It took ten years, maybe even twenty years, to make these two regions successful; it is about the time it takes to grow infants into adults. The oven should not be too hot, so that the desire is not killed, then the temperature should be increased to maintain the enthusiasm. A temperate, pleasant climate is therefore necessary. If all the conditions are in place, the result will probably be interesting”. [Page 176. Start-Up: What We May Still Learn From Silicon Valley]
The world of innovation does not happen at the macro-level. Innovation is a “body contact sport.” It is a micro-level phenomenon. When applied to innovation, rational choice theory might make sense if you’re a theorist thinking abstractly about the way the world should work. It does not accurately describe the way the world actually works. [Page 37] You cannot understand the macro without understanding the micro. […] the world is far more complicated – one must deal with a range of complex social and psychological factors, personal networks, and information flows. [Page 48]
Free market proponents sometimes support investments in scientific research as a way to stimulate new innovation. […] Scientific research, however, does not always lead to economic growth. Each $1 increase in scientific research does not necessarily result in a $1 increase in economic activity in the overall system. The research alone is not sufficient. […] In the real world, the path from discovery to commercial product is so long, tortuous, and serendipitous that the vast majority of world-changing technologies never see the light of day. Society has a surprisingly huge backlog of scientific discoveries that are “stuck in the pipeline”, stalled by the human barriers that prevent them from reaching the marketplace. [Page 40]
For instance, the state of Kansas actively invested in its high-tech entrepreneurs. The University of Kansas provided research grants to develop products for commercial application. The university promoted regional collaboration, entrepreneurial training and even direct assistance. The results of these endeavors, however, were nothing like those of Silicon Valley. And the vast majority of the world looks a lot more like Kansas than California. [Page 41] A cluster is a description of a phenomenon, not a prescription for policy. [Page 42]
Whereas a company is a group of individuals working together, a cluster is a region of individuals or companies working together. In both cases, these relationships result in lower transaction costs. And in both cases, those savings are derived from the fact that people are closer together, can communicate more easily, and trust each other more. [Page 46]
And again let me give you an extract from my book, now quoting Richard Newton: “The Bay Area is the Corporation. […When people change jobs here in the BayArea], they’re actually just moving among the various divisions of the Bay Area Corporation.” [Page 102 – Start-up]
I am not sure anyone has “The Secret to Building the Next Silicon Valley”, but I will post more when I am more advanced in reading the Rainforest!
in a nutshell, the entrepreneurial ecosystems need 3 ingredients – I quote: – capital: by definition, no new business can be launched without money and relevant infrastructures (which consist of capital tied up in tangible assets); – know-how: you need engineers, developers, designers, salespeople: all those whose skills are necessary for launching and growing innovative businesses; – rebellion: an entrepreneur always challenges the status quo. If they wanted to play by the book, they would innovate within big, established companies, where they would be better paid and would have access to more resources.
This reminds me of two “recipes” I often mention. First the “5 needed ingredients of tech. clusters”
1. Universities and research centers of a very high caliber;
2. An industry of venture capital (i.e. financial institutions and private investors);
3. Experienced professionals in high tech;
4. Service providers such as lawyers, head hunters, public relations and marketing specialists, auditors, etc.
5. Last but not least, an intangible yet critical component: a pioneering spirit which encourages an entrepreneurial culture.
in “Understanding Silicon Valley, the Anatomy of an Entrepreneurial Region”, by M. Kenney, more precisely in chapter: “A Flexible Recycling” by S. Evans and H. Bahrami
Second, Paul Graham in How to be Silicon Valley?“Few startups happen in Miami, for example, because although it’s full of rich people, it has few nerds. It’s not the kind of place nerds like. Whereas Pittsburgh has the opposite problem: plenty of nerds, but no rich people.” He also added about failed ecosystems: “I read occasionally about attempts to set up “technology parks” in other places, as if the active ingredient of Silicon Valley were the office space. An article about Sophia Antipolis bragged that companies there included Cisco, Compaq, IBM, NCR, and Nortel. Don’t the French realize these aren’t startups?”
Many toxic friends of entrepreneurial ecosystems have not understood this. But for those who have understood, building lively ecosystems remains a real challenge: bringing the rebellion, the culture, diminishing the fear of risk taking without stigmatizing (not rewarding– here I disagree with Colin) failure remains highly challenging whereas finding know-how and capital is not easy but feasible with some hard work…
Finally, I copy his diagrams which show ideal and less ideal combinations of capital, know-how and rebellion, adding my exercise for Switzerland.
Switzerland is probably 80% Germany and 20% France…
(A short addition on Oct 29, 2015) – The best description of Switzerland was given by Orson Welles. It explains a lot of things…
“In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.” in The Third Man, said by Holly Martins to Harry Lime.
No it is not a true coming out à la Tim Cook, but a much less spectacular message… I woke up early this morning very disturbed. As you can see below, the ecosystem to support entrepreneurs at EPFL (finance, coaching, exposure and office space) is rich and complex. Yet our results are average not to say mediocre… all this is in fact useless without the ambition and risk-taking of enthusiastic and passionate individuals.
I’m not talking about people, but the system. A few days ago, I said to colleagues I was a matchmaker. I encourage meetings and I put the oil in the wheels. Then I smiled, thinking – I’m usually not too vulgar – that I offered vaseline for introducing investors. Fifteen years ago, an entrepreneur who had enjoyed a chat told me that I made him think of a prostitute but hidden behind me, there were nasty pimps…
Two days ago, I was lucky to listen at EPFL to a Nobel Prize in economics who explained that the Western world is in decline, that the crisis can be explained in part by a weak innovation. Corporatism and financiarization are some reasons of this. Then there was a shocking message from another speaker. Switzerland would be fine because it is hard-working while its neighbor would go wrong because its workers start their weekend on Wednesday at noon. Who can believe that unemployment and bankruptcy in Detroit would come from the laziness of the automobile workers and the success of Silicon Valley because of workaholic nerds. Things are much more complex! Just see in particular the recent analysis of Thomas Picketty or the related MIT Technology Review Technology and Inequality.
Four days ago, I listened to the US ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein. Suzi Levine knows the world of start-ups. She is therefore interested in the situation in Switzerland. I noticed two of her messages:
– First “you have a lot of money but little capital”, I leave you to think about the message that was given to her at EPFL I think, “you have a lot of money but little capital”.
– Second, the weakness of the female presence in this entrepreneurial world. She therefore particularly appreciated that the Prix Musy be created this year. But our efforts will be useless, if we do not encourage and allow the emergence of passionate and adventurous entrepreneurs that create wealth and value… it’s not just about women, but diversity in general which should not be hindered by corporatism and financiarization.
My colleague Jean-Philippe Solvay recently asked me to a react to a Facebook post asking what is exactly a start-up. And as you may read there, it is not so easy to answer. One of the best references given in the post is swombat.com rather exhaustive analysis.
In the past, I wrote two posts: “part 1” was in 2011, where I had given my definition: “A start-up is a company which is born out of an idea and has the potential to become a large company” as well as the very good definition by Steve Blank: “startups are temporary organizations designed to search for a scalable and repeatable business model.” (There is something I am not comfortable with Steve Blank’s: I would delete “model”, as a start-up may know what it wants to do, but has not validated it yet. And start-ups copying existing business models would not be ones…)
Then in “part 2” in early 2013, I added the following: “A start-up is a corporation which explores, which is looking for a business model, a market, customers and is trying to innovate. It usually looks for a big market (“scalable”) and therefore service businesses do not qualify (except on the web) as they do not often scale. It is also a matter of strong and rapid growth in emerging markets because the competition is tough and there will be few winners. It often go fast. That is why it is more about a mindset: you are curious, in an uncertain world, trying to bring new things to the world. Because you are looking for a business, you do not have enough paying customers, and you will most likely need external capital (business angels, venture capital) except if your future customers accept to pay a lot in advance. This is why there is a strong correlation between being a start-up and having investors.”
I agree with most features given in the facebook or swombat contributions: “start-ups are new firms focusing on innovation and growth in situations of high uncertainty (or risk)”. They do not have to be about technology and if so, they are called high-tech start-ups. Maybe innovation is not so important, as many just copy others, but growth (through scalability) is critical. Consulting or service firms usually do not qualify because the growth is linear, not exponential (with the number of jobs).
Let me add another point: if the start-up term, was created, there has to be a good reason! When was it created? Wikipedia claims it became popular with the dot.com bubble of the late nineties. However, I found the term in Saxenian’s Regional Advantage (1994) and even in Silicon Valley Fever (1984). There is no doubt the term emerged with the technology clusters Route 128 and Silicon valley, the reason why it is associated with high-tech as well as venture capital. But not all start-ups belong to these geographic clusters. Microsoft and Amazon are based in Seattle, which is (at least was) not really a cluster. When they do not belong to a geographic cluster, they belong to a technology cluster, mostly IT (electronics, software, internet) or biotech/medtech. Tesla Motors is considered a start-up because it belongs to the Silicon Valley ecosystem though it is in an industry where very few start-ups exist. I do not think EasyJet was ever called a start-up because it belongs to no (technology or geographic) clsuter. So I would finally define a start-up as “a new firm focusing on growth in situations of high uncertainty, and belonging to a technology or geographic cluster”.
PS: while looking into the topic again, I found a debate on how to spell the word… In 2007, I had decided for “start-up”, but “start up” and “startup” also existed. It seems “startup” is now more and more popular. I stick to “start-up” for the time being, just to be consistent with what I always did.
Very good article by the MIT technology review about technology clusters: In Innovation Quest, Regions Seek Critical Mass. Nothing really new, but it shows again and again how difficult it is to build such clusters and to promote an innovation culture. I just extract a few quotes:
“Clusters exist—it’s empirically proven,” Yasuyuki Motoyama, a senior scholar at the Kauffman Foundation, told me. “But that doesn’t mean governments can create one.”
The problem for governments is that they often try to define where and when innovation will occur. Some attempt to pick and fund winning companies. Such efforts have rarely worked well, says Josh Lerner, a professor at Harvard Business School. Governments can play a role, he says, but they should limit themselves mostly to “setting the table”: create laws that don’t penalize failed entrepreneurs, reduce taxes, and spend heavily on R&D. Then get out of the way.
But can entrepreneurs succeed in creating clusters where governments have had so much difficulty? “The conflict now is between two logics on how to create an ecosystem,” says Fiona Murray, a professor at MIT’s Sloan School, who consults as a kind of therapist to clusters, including London’s TechCity. One is “a government logic that says it’s too important to leave to entrepreneurs, and that you that need specialized inputs, like a technology park.” The other is “purely focused on people and their networks.” Murray believes the answer lies somewhere in the middle. Governments are good at organizing but poor at leading.
I will finsih by reminding you the power of SV in the cluster leadership…
There are so many articles, studies about technology clusters or ecosystems that I am not sure exactly why I write this. The only explanation is that I have read a couple of simultaneous studies, all mostly going in the same direction. Whereas there’s been a trend claiming the decline of the USA in favor of Asia or predicting the decline of Silicon Valle (SV), these ones show the opposite: the USA still leads, and among the American clusters, Silicon Valley is by far #1.
I read the report and changed the ranking method with their own data and got the following new graph. I basically weighted all parameters (Output, Funding, Performance, Mindset, Support, Talent, Trendsetter, Differentiation to SV) on the horizontal axis, but deleted the last two ones on the vertical axis as I was not convinced about their role. It obviously shows there is a lot of subjectivity in rankings! The only thing which does not seem to be debatable is that SV is number 1.
There’s been another interest study: Ecosystem 101: The Six Necessary Categories To Build The Next Silicon Valley. It’s a good complement to the Startup Genome work, which is weak on Asia. The criteria here are Market, Capital, People, Culture, Infrastructure and Regulations. Again the USA leads, but weakness here is that we do not have a more detailed description of local clusters.
Nice series on French-speaking Swiss Radio broadcast les Temps Modernes, this week about five stimulating experiments of high-tech clusters. Probably to fight the depressing mood around WEF and the economic crisis. (And not only because I was given the opportunity this morning to comment the last case! I was only invited on Wednesday… 🙂 )
A spontaneous emerging cluster, a name given by a local entrepreneur, no real support by decision makers, at least in the beginning and a nice and enthusiastic atmosphere. And all this attracts people from abroad. Is this finally the cluster Europe has been waiting for? We shall see… The experiment is really interesting and if you want to know more, you may wish to read (French) Le Monde, Le “Silicon Roundabout”, un succès britannique, or The Economist, Silicon Roundabout.
