Startup Communities Quotes

“While the range of people, organizations, resources, and conditions involved in an entrepreneurial ecosystem are useful to understand, they are not the most critical construct. Instead, the interaction between each of the components is what matters.”
― Brad Feld, The Startup Community Way: Evolving an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem

“Entrepreneurship itself is an emergent system, where companies create the conditions for experimentation and learning to occur, often symbiotically with customers. In 1978, Eric von Hippel (my PhD advisor at MIT) pioneered the notion of user-driven innovation.10, 11 Back then, the conventional wisdom was that innovation only came from corporate, government, and university research-and-development labs. While some still believe this today, Eric's insight proved to be prescient in many areas, especially in the information age, as the widespread adoption of open-source software and Lean Startup methodologies have demonstrated.12 Twitter is a tangible example since three of the platform's most popular features—the @ reply, the # hashtag indexing, and retweet sharing—were all generated bottom-up by users.”
― Brad Feld, The Startup Community Way: Evolving an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem

“The most powerful mentor/mentee relationships are those in which the mentor and the mentee ultimately become peers.”
― Brad Feld, Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City

“Government runs in short time cycles, usually less than four years. It often feels like we are in an endless campaign cycle and, in some cases, at least half of the activity of government leaders feels like it is around the process of getting reelected. After an election, there is often a three-month lame-duck period where nothing happens, followed by a six-month period as the new administration gears up, puts new leaders in place, makes its plans, does its studies, writes its reports, and then launches its new initiatives. That’s nine months of a four-year cycle wasted.”
― Brad Feld, Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City

“A contemporary example of holistic thinking is found in the approach Mark Suster and his firm Upfront Ventures took in helping evolve the Los Angeles startup community. A decade ago, many perceived LA as a small, relatively unimportant startup community. Mark and his partners at GRP Partners rebranded the firm Upfront Ventures in 2013 and began a concerted effort to amplify, publicize, and evolve the LA startup community. Mark was unapologetically bold about the awesomeness going on in LA. He started an annual Upfront Summit that was inclusive of all LA entrepreneurs, bringing venture capitalists and limited partners from around the country to LA for a two-day event showcasing everything going on in the region. By approaching the problem holistically, rather than attempting to solve one particular issue or to control things, Upfront dramatically accelerated the LA startup community while at the same time building an international brand for the firm.”
― Brad Feld, The Startup Community Way: Evolving an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem

“The complex nature of today's innovations requires teams of people with diverse skills. As Victor Hwang and Greg Horowitt describe in their book, The Rainforest: The Secret to Building the Next Silicon Valley, we are in need of diverse teams more than ever, but we are unfortunately hardwired to distrust people who are different from us. The ability to consistently overcome this limitation of human nature separates vibrant innovation systems from the others.”
― Brad Feld, The Startup Community Way: Evolving an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem

“Social capital, or “networks of trust,” are rooted in relationships based on a common set of norms and values that bind a group of individuals together and enable them to collaborate more effectively. Networks of trust are critical in complex systems that demand high performance under fast-paced, ambiguous, and evolving conditions. Successful outcomes in military special forces, modern aviation, championship sports, and hyper-growth startups all require teamwork that is grounded in trust and a shared sense of purpose.”
― Brad Feld, The Startup Community Way: Evolving an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem

“Hierarchies are best suited for situations that require tight control of production, information, or resources, such as manufacturers or large bureaucracies that exist in universities, governments, and militaries. Hierarchies are robust and inflexible, requiring formal rules, standard operating procedures, and a chain of command. In contrast, networks are resilient and adaptable, requiring flexibility and horizontal flows of information. Healthy startup communities rely upon unencumbered information flows organized in network-based structures. Conversely, they suffocate under hierarchical control.”
― Brad Feld, The Startup Community Way: Evolving an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem

“rhetorical appeal to make the local research university the next—and you can fill in the”
― Brad Feld, Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City