Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City

by Brad Feld

First, government often has less money to apply to things than people think it does. As a result, there’s often a big mismatch between expectation and reality when it comes time to actually fund something. Next, very few people in government have a background as entrepreneurs, and, as a result, they don’t really understand startups in any depth. Consequently the language, the activities, and the interactions are awkward and often ineffective. Government also moves at a much slower pace than entrepreneurs and, when it’s in a leadership role, it stifles the individual leadership that emerges. Finally, government runs on a very different time cycle—typically two to four years—than entrepreneurs do.