The Startup as a commodity and Hyperconvergence
The Startup, as we know it, has become a commodity.
Startup is now taught in high schools. The Startup Manual and Lean Startup methods on how to start a business, are getting as popular as soccer. They teach how to start a business the same way as teaching Bar-Mitzvah boys how to read the Torah.
The hands-on incubators like Y Combinator, Techstarts, have a business model similar elite kindergartens, They are all restricted to young, carefully pre-selected budding "avatars of success", with a median age of 23.
Among incubators Y Combinator is most successful, However nearly 75% of the total value of nearly 500 companies they have funded comes from two big players (Dropbox and Airbnb).
Some incubators created one the most conceited and arrogant breed of young entrepreneurs. They are taught that a successful startup company is the elixir of happiness and they are bred "scientifically" to be forever fearless winners, and immune to the vicissitudes and perils in real life roller-coasters. It sounds like Nietzsche Übermensch as a goal for humanity to perfect itself
They never smashed their heads against a wall.
The next mind blowing success investments (like Google) will come from non-conformists and underdogs, not from incubators. Whatsapp is not from an incubator. The founder is a Ukraine immigrant graduated from San Jose University, not Stanford, They faced rejection and his family subsisted on food stamps for a while.
The latter bullet #3 "observing life" is not for commodity entrepreneurs starting ephemeral companies with built-in layoffs at the end.
Enterprises's critics claim there are too many people involved in decision-making and one no longer has context on everything that’s going on. On the other hand, they’re having impact on millions of people, They invests in ambitious missions or goals because large multinationals have the resources to do so.
They need people who are team players, will raise the bar in some direction, They also need people who are strong communicators who are good at aligning and connecting groups
In other words, they need people with very different skills from what a frugal startup needs, - often managed with iron fist by an Übermensch narcissistic founder.
"Big companies didn’t get to where they are without creating some kind of value in the world for people and take more time to try and do things right for the long-term." says Julie
Human beings, seek a re-instated stability in our society, with career path and quality lives. A few optimized multi-nationals can make more GDP contributions in all countries they operate than tens of thousands of mildly successful startups.
Not everyone is younger than 30. Not everyone has a personality adaptable to a startup, yet there are millions of people with invaluable talents to bring out social wealth.
Silicon Lagoon — Lagos, Nigeria
Silicon Savannah — Nairobi, Kenya
Silicon Peninsula — Dalian, China
Silicon Gulf — Davao City, Philippines
Silicon Valley of China — Zhongguancun, Haidian District, Beijing, People's Republic of China (PRC)
Silicon Valley of India (sometimes referred to as Silicon Plateau) — Bangalore
Silicon Valley of South Korea — New Songdo City, Incheon
Silicon Valley of Indonesia — Bandung, Indonesia
Silicon Valley of Taiwan — Hsinchu, Taiwan
Silicon Goli — Dhaka, Bangladesh
Silicon Welly — Wellington in New Zealand
Silicon St, Sydney An inner city colloquial district including Ultimo/Pyrmont along Harris St spanning 10sqkms from UTS to Google including Fishburners
Kista (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈɕiːsta], Silicon Valley of Sweden
Health Valley — The Netherlands
Food Valley — The Netherlands
Etna Valley – Catania, Italy
Russian Silicon Valley:
Skolkovo innovation center
Zelenograd, Moscow
Silicon Docks — Dublin, Ireland
Silicon Sentier — Paris, France
Silicon Sloboda — Moscow, Russia
Silicon Taiga — Akademgorodok, Russia
Ticino Valley - Switzerland, technology cluster in the Lugano Area
Silicon Wadi – Haifa, Tel Aviv, Israel
CFK Valley – Stade, Lower Saxony
Isar Valley - Munich, Bavaria
IT-Cluster Rhine-Main-Neckar / IT Valley - Rhine-Main-Neckar region
Measurement Valley – Göttingen, Lower Saxony
Medical Valley – Erlangen region, Bavaria
Silicon Allee (English: Silicon Avenue) — Berlin (incl. WISTA)
Silicon Saxony — Dresden, Saxony, Elbe river valley around the city
Silicon Woods – Kaiserslautern, Rhineland-Palatinate
Solar Valley – Thalheim, Saxony-Anhalt
Cwm Silicon — Newport, Wales
Silicon Canal — Birmingham, England — the area along the Digbeth Branch Canal from Aston Science Park, through Millennium Point to Digbeth.
Silicon Corridor — the M4 corridor
Silicon Dock — Belfast
Silicon Fen — Cambridge, England[1]
Silicon Glen — Central Belt, Scotland
Silicon Walk — Edinburgh, Scotland
Silicon Gorge — Bristol, England
Silicon Alley — Pink Lane, Newcastle Upon Tyne, England
Silicon Mall — London, England — the area between Pall Mall and Victoria in London
Silicon Mill — Manchester and North West England[2]
Silicon Roundabout — the area around Old Street Roundabout in London
Silicon Pier — Brighton, England
Silicon Shipyard — Newcastle upon Tyne, Gateshead, Middlesbrough
Silicon Spa — Leamington Spa, Warwickshire [3]
Silicon Forest — Newark, Nottinghamshire — Silicon Forest consists of various businesses from in and around the Newark and Sherwood area that specialise in technology and innovation.
Silicon Beach - Bournemouth, England
Silicon Wadi — The coastal plain of Israel, stretching from Haifa to Tel Aviv and Rehovot and expanding inland to Jerusalem
Brazilian Silicon Valley — Campinas, Brazil
Lima Valley — Lima, Peru
Silicon Valley North — Ottawa, Canada, though questionable since the 2009 bankruptcy of Nortel and the 2008 pull-out of Dell's call centre[5]
Silicon Vineyard — Okanagan Valley, Canada
Mexican Silicon Valley/Silicon Valley South — Jalisco, Mexico
Silicon Border — Mexicali, Mexico
Silicon Anchor — Norfolk, Va–Virginia Beach metropolitan area
Silicon Bayou — New Orleans, Louisiana
Silicon Beach — Santa Monica, California and the Westside area of the Los Angeles metro, more specifically Culver City, Venice Beach, Westwood, Manhattan Beach, Malibu, Playa del Rey, and Marina del Rey; also used to refer to the San Diego area in the name of the 1980s software developer Silicon Beach Software
Silicon Bridge — DUMBO, Brooklyn, New York
Silicon Canal — The area of Seattle, Washington along the Fremont Cut.
Silicon Coast — Orange County, California
Silicon Desert — Chandler, Arizona
Silicon Forest — Portland, Oregon
Silicon Harbor — Charleston, South Carolina
Silicon Hill — Washington, DC
Silicon Hills — Austin, Texas
Silicon Mountain — Front Range Urban Corridor, Colorado (Denver, Boulder, Fort Collins, Colorado Springs)
Silicon Prairie
Dallas-Fort Worth Silicon Prairie — Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, Texas
Illinois Silicon Prairie — Chicago and Urbana-Champaign
Midwest Silicon Prairie — Omaha, Des Moines, Kansas City
Wyoming Silicon Prairie, also called the "Silicon Range" — Jackson Hole
Silicon Sandbar — Cape Cod, Massachusetts[citation needed]
Silicon Shire — Eugene, Oregon
Silicon Shore — Santa Barbara, California
Silicon Slopes — Utah, concentrated in the Wasatch Front
Silicon Snowfield — Rochester, New York
Silicon Surf — Santa Cruz, California
Silicon Swamp — Gainesville, Florida southwest toward Tampa, headquarters of Grooveshark and many other technology companies.
Silicon Valley — San Jose, California (the original "Silicon" namesake)
Silicon Valley of the Sierras — Nevada County, California
Philicon Valley — Area close to Philadelphia, in the suburbs of Valley Forge and Wayne, also known as "Silicon Valley Forge"[6]
Cyber District — Area of Boston between Summer and Congress Streets, near Fort Point Channel, has organized itself as the "CyberDistrict"[6]
Silicotton Valley — Huntsville, Alabama
Silicon Valley of South Florida
Silicon XXX name is a commodity
Silicon Valley inspired me-too's all over the the world. See in the Appendix 1 the Wikipedia's list of places with the word "Silicon" in their name |
| THE WORLD’S 20 HOTTEST STARTUP SCENES (INFOGRAPHIC) |
The hands-on incubators like Y Combinator, Techstarts, have a business model similar elite kindergartens, They are all restricted to young, carefully pre-selected budding "avatars of success", with a median age of 23.
Statups as a commodity
A quote from an interview that X-rays and extracts the essence without offending - The New Yorker talks to Mark Andreessen, of Andreessen Horowitz (aka a16z).Each year, three thousand startups approach a16z with a “warm intro” from someone the firm knows. A16z invests in fifteen. Of those, at least ten will fold, three or four will prosper, and one might soar to be worth more than a billion dollars—a “unicorn,” in the local parlance. With great luck, once a decade that unicorn will become a Google or a Facebook and return the V.C.’s money a thousand times over: the storied 1,000x. There are eight hundred and three V.C. firms in the U.S., and last year they spent forty-eight billion dollars chasing that dream.803 US Venture Capital firms spent 48 billion dollars investment, played games with a mere 0.03% of US GDP .
The new elite: kindergarten entrepreneurs
To have access to a top VC firm, you need a recommendation. You can't drop in from the street, like 20 years ago. Then you have 1 in 200 chances to get funded. If you are older than 30, your chances are diminished and if you are older than 40, chances are zero. Just read what Ben Horowitz says on page 175 of his bookAmong incubators Y Combinator is most successful, However nearly 75% of the total value of nearly 500 companies they have funded comes from two big players (Dropbox and Airbnb).
Some incubators created one the most conceited and arrogant breed of young entrepreneurs. They are taught that a successful startup company is the elixir of happiness and they are bred "scientifically" to be forever fearless winners, and immune to the vicissitudes and perils in real life roller-coasters. It sounds like Nietzsche Übermensch as a goal for humanity to perfect itself
They never smashed their heads against a wall.
Real life entrepreneurs
Real life is different, Every big winner experiences defeats, as part of the creative processThe next mind blowing success investments (like Google) will come from non-conformists and underdogs, not from incubators. Whatsapp is not from an incubator. The founder is a Ukraine immigrant graduated from San Jose University, not Stanford, They faced rejection and his family subsisted on food stamps for a while.
The divorce from Enterprise needs.
The entire system of incubators has not a clue what enterprises and the real world needs. They believe people don't know what they want, they do. They oftern quote Steve Jobs. Yet no one is clone of Steve Jobs and there are many would-be Steve Jobs who failed and we will never hear of them.
After all, the economy of United States and Europe is more than just ordering a taxi or reserving a bed and breakfast. The biggest buyers in the world are still large corporations who need tools and reasons to transform themselves in new model factory model. Products like Docker and DevOps orchestration are brilliant, but how the fledgling startup and open source movements can sell what they developed? To whom? How?
After all, the economy of United States and Europe is more than just ordering a taxi or reserving a bed and breakfast. The biggest buyers in the world are still large corporations who need tools and reasons to transform themselves in new model factory model. Products like Docker and DevOps orchestration are brilliant, but how the fledgling startup and open source movements can sell what they developed? To whom? How?
Perhaps ignoring (or not knowing) what clients need, is a necessary freedom to discover things no one thought possible before. But what happens after people say: "Wow: we discovered how to revolutionize IT? Now what?
Enterprises and large companies
They have a major, major role to play. Julie Zhuo product design director @ Facebook essays from The Year of the Looking Glass are about (1) design, (2) building products, and (3) observing life.The latter bullet #3 "observing life" is not for commodity entrepreneurs starting ephemeral companies with built-in layoffs at the end.
Enterprises's critics claim there are too many people involved in decision-making and one no longer has context on everything that’s going on. On the other hand, they’re having impact on millions of people, They invests in ambitious missions or goals because large multinationals have the resources to do so.
They need people who are team players, will raise the bar in some direction, They also need people who are strong communicators who are good at aligning and connecting groups
In other words, they need people with very different skills from what a frugal startup needs, - often managed with iron fist by an Übermensch narcissistic founder.
"Big companies didn’t get to where they are without creating some kind of value in the world for people and take more time to try and do things right for the long-term." says Julie
Human beings, seek a re-instated stability in our society, with career path and quality lives. A few optimized multi-nationals can make more GDP contributions in all countries they operate than tens of thousands of mildly successful startups.
Not everyone is younger than 30. Not everyone has a personality adaptable to a startup, yet there are millions of people with invaluable talents to bring out social wealth.
What is Hyperconvergence?
Under the converged infrastructure approach, a vendor provides a preconfigured bundle of hardware and software in a single chassis with the goal of minimizing compatibility issues and simplifying management.
A hyper-converged system differs from a converged system in its tighter integration of the software components, which may expand beyond compute, storage, networking and virtualization the stack, ready for use right out of the box.
Who can create, sell profitable , support and transform other enterprises to new levels of efficiencies using hyperconvergence? The large companies and the startup companies form a new symbiosis
The new synergy
Large company and startup companies can make each other prosperous. The classic model of acquiring startup companies as an entrance to heaven does not work always.
We enter the era of hyperconvergence. A complicated word, for a brilliant concept.
More about it in a future blog.
 |
| Taking the Hype out of Hyperconvergence. The market demand for simplified, work-out-of-the-box, pre-integrated solutions have seemingly everyone hopping on the hyperconvergence bandwagon |
Appendix 1: List of places with "Silicon" in the name
Africa
Silicon Cape — Cape Town, South AfricaSilicon Lagoon — Lagos, Nigeria
Silicon Savannah — Nairobi, Kenya
Asia
Bit Valley — Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan (a pun on Shibuya's literal translation of "Bitter Valley")Silicon Peninsula — Dalian, China
Silicon Gulf — Davao City, Philippines
Silicon Valley of China — Zhongguancun, Haidian District, Beijing, People's Republic of China (PRC)
Silicon Valley of India (sometimes referred to as Silicon Plateau) — Bangalore
Silicon Valley of South Korea — New Songdo City, Incheon
Silicon Valley of Indonesia — Bandung, Indonesia
Silicon Valley of Taiwan — Hsinchu, Taiwan
Silicon Goli — Dhaka, Bangladesh
Australasia
Silicon Mallee — Adelaide, Australia (Mallee, an Australian aboriginal word for the land area around Adelaide covered by low, scrubby dwarf eucalyptus 'mallee' vegetationSilicon Welly — Wellington in New Zealand
Silicon St, Sydney An inner city colloquial district including Ultimo/Pyrmont along Harris St spanning 10sqkms from UTS to Google including Fishburners
Europe
SiliconFjord - Oslofjord-regionKista (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈɕiːsta], Silicon Valley of Sweden
Health Valley — The Netherlands
Food Valley — The Netherlands
Etna Valley – Catania, Italy
Russian Silicon Valley:
Skolkovo innovation center
Zelenograd, Moscow
Silicon Docks — Dublin, Ireland
Silicon Sentier — Paris, France
Silicon Sloboda — Moscow, Russia
Silicon Taiga — Akademgorodok, Russia
Ticino Valley - Switzerland, technology cluster in the Lugano Area
Silicon Wadi – Haifa, Tel Aviv, Israel
Germany[
BioCon Valley - Mecklenburg and Western PomeraniaCFK Valley – Stade, Lower Saxony
Isar Valley - Munich, Bavaria
IT-Cluster Rhine-Main-Neckar / IT Valley - Rhine-Main-Neckar region
Measurement Valley – Göttingen, Lower Saxony
Medical Valley – Erlangen region, Bavaria
Silicon Allee (English: Silicon Avenue) — Berlin (incl. WISTA)
Silicon Saxony — Dresden, Saxony, Elbe river valley around the city
Silicon Woods – Kaiserslautern, Rhineland-Palatinate
Solar Valley – Thalheim, Saxony-Anhalt
United Kingdom
Cwm Silicon — Newport, Wales
Silicon Canal — Birmingham, England — the area along the Digbeth Branch Canal from Aston Science Park, through Millennium Point to Digbeth.
Silicon Corridor — the M4 corridor
Silicon Dock — Belfast
Silicon Fen — Cambridge, England[1]
Silicon Glen — Central Belt, Scotland
Silicon Walk — Edinburgh, Scotland
Silicon Gorge — Bristol, England
Silicon Alley — Pink Lane, Newcastle Upon Tyne, England
Silicon Mall — London, England — the area between Pall Mall and Victoria in London
Silicon Mill — Manchester and North West England[2]
Silicon Roundabout — the area around Old Street Roundabout in London
Silicon Pier — Brighton, England
Silicon Shipyard — Newcastle upon Tyne, Gateshead, Middlesbrough
Silicon Spa — Leamington Spa, Warwickshire [3]
Silicon Forest — Newark, Nottinghamshire — Silicon Forest consists of various businesses from in and around the Newark and Sherwood area that specialise in technology and innovation.
Silicon Beach - Bournemouth, England
Middle East
Dubai Silicon Oasis — Dubai, United Arab EmiratesSilicon Wadi — The coastal plain of Israel, stretching from Haifa to Tel Aviv and Rehovot and expanding inland to Jerusalem
South America
Sapiens Parque — Florianopolis, BrazilBrazilian Silicon Valley — Campinas, Brazil
Lima Valley — Lima, Peru
North America
Silicon Valley of the North - Ontario Highway 401 between Toronto and Waterloo[4]Silicon Valley North — Ottawa, Canada, though questionable since the 2009 bankruptcy of Nortel and the 2008 pull-out of Dell's call centre[5]
Silicon Vineyard — Okanagan Valley, Canada
Mexican Silicon Valley/Silicon Valley South — Jalisco, Mexico
Silicon Border — Mexicali, Mexico
United States
Silicon Alley — A portion of Lower Manhattan in New York City, more specifically Broadway, the Flatiron District, TriBeCa and SoHoSilicon Anchor — Norfolk, Va–Virginia Beach metropolitan area
Silicon Bayou — New Orleans, Louisiana
Silicon Beach — Santa Monica, California and the Westside area of the Los Angeles metro, more specifically Culver City, Venice Beach, Westwood, Manhattan Beach, Malibu, Playa del Rey, and Marina del Rey; also used to refer to the San Diego area in the name of the 1980s software developer Silicon Beach Software
Silicon Bridge — DUMBO, Brooklyn, New York
Silicon Canal — The area of Seattle, Washington along the Fremont Cut.
Silicon Coast — Orange County, California
Silicon Desert — Chandler, Arizona
Silicon Forest — Portland, Oregon
Silicon Harbor — Charleston, South Carolina
Silicon Hill — Washington, DC
Silicon Hills — Austin, Texas
Silicon Mountain — Front Range Urban Corridor, Colorado (Denver, Boulder, Fort Collins, Colorado Springs)
Silicon Prairie
Dallas-Fort Worth Silicon Prairie — Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, Texas
Illinois Silicon Prairie — Chicago and Urbana-Champaign
Midwest Silicon Prairie — Omaha, Des Moines, Kansas City
Wyoming Silicon Prairie, also called the "Silicon Range" — Jackson Hole
Silicon Sandbar — Cape Cod, Massachusetts[citation needed]
Silicon Shire — Eugene, Oregon
Silicon Shore — Santa Barbara, California
Silicon Slopes — Utah, concentrated in the Wasatch Front
Silicon Snowfield — Rochester, New York
Silicon Surf — Santa Cruz, California
Silicon Swamp — Gainesville, Florida southwest toward Tampa, headquarters of Grooveshark and many other technology companies.
Silicon Valley — San Jose, California (the original "Silicon" namesake)
Silicon Valley of the Sierras — Nevada County, California
Philicon Valley — Area close to Philadelphia, in the suburbs of Valley Forge and Wayne, also known as "Silicon Valley Forge"[6]
Cyber District — Area of Boston between Summer and Congress Streets, near Fort Point Channel, has organized itself as the "CyberDistrict"[6]
Silicotton Valley — Huntsville, Alabama
Silicon Valley of South Florida
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