Can You Buy a Silicon Valley? Maybe.

February 2009 A lot of cities look at Silicon Valley and ask "How could we make something like that happen here?" The organic way to do it is to establish a first-rate university in a place where rich people want to live.

2009 年 2 月 许多城市看着硅谷并询问“我们怎样才能让这样的事情发生在这里？”有机的方式是在富人想要居住的地方建立一所一流的大学。

That's how Silicon Valley happened.

硅谷就是这样发生的。

But could you shortcut the process by funding startups?

但你能通过资助初创公司来缩短这个过程吗？

Possibly.

可能吧。

Let's consider what it would take.

让我们考虑一下这需要什么。

The first thing to understand is that encouraging startups is a

首先要明白的是，鼓励初创企业是

different problem from encouraging startups in a particular city.

与鼓励特定城市的初创企业存在不同的问题。

The latter is much more expensive.

后者要贵得多。

People sometimes think they could improve the startup scene in their town by starting something like Y Combinator there, but in fact it will have near zero effect.

人们有时认为他们可以通过在那里创办 Y Combinator 之类的东西来改善他们所在城镇的创业环境，但事实上它的效果几乎为零。

I know because Y Combinator itself had near zero effect on Boston when we were based there half the year.

我知道，因为当我们在波士顿呆了半年时，Y Combinator 本身对波士顿的影响几乎为零。

The people we funded came from all over the country (indeed, the

我们资助的人来自全国各地（事实上，

world) and afterward they went wherever they could get more funding—which generally meant Silicon Valley.

世界），之后他们去了任何可以获得更多资金的地方——这通常意味着硅谷。

The seed funding business is not a regional business, because at that stage startups are mobile.

种子资金业务不是区域性业务，因为在那个阶段初创公司是移动的。

They're just a couple founders with laptops.

他们只是几个拥有笔记本电脑的创始人。

[ 1 ] If you want to encourage startups in a particular city, you have to fund startups that won't leave.

[1]如果你想鼓励某个城市的初创公司，你就必须资助那些不会离开的初创公司。

There are two ways to do that: have rules preventing them from leaving, or fund them at the point

有两种方法可以做到这一点：制定规则阻止他们离开，或者立即资助他们

in their life when they naturally take root.

当他们自然而然地在他们的生活中扎根时。

The first approach is a mistake, because it becomes a filter for selecting bad startups.

第一种方法是错误的，因为它成为选择不良初创公司的过滤器。

If your terms force startups to do things they don't want to, only the desperate ones will take your money.

如果你的条款强迫初创公司做他们不想做的事情，那么只有绝望的初创公司才会拿走你的钱。

Good startups will move to another city as a condition of funding.

好的初创公司会搬到另一个城市作为融资的条件。

What they won't do is agree not to move the next time they need funding.

他们不会同意下次需要资金时不再搬家。

So the only way to get them to stay is to give them enough

所以让他们留下来的唯一方法就是给他们足够的

that they never need to leave.

他们永远不需要离开。

___ How much would that take?

___ 那需要多少钱？

If you want to keep startups from leaving your town, you have to give them enough that they're not tempted by an offer from Silicon Valley VCs that requires them to move.

如果你想阻止初创公司离开你的城镇，你必须给他们足够的钱，让他们不会受到硅谷风险投资公司要求他们搬家的报价的诱惑。

A startup would be able to refuse such an offer if they had grown to the point where they were (a) rooted in your town and/or (b) so successful that VCs would fund them even if they didn't move.

如果一家初创公司已经发展到（a）扎根于你的城镇和/或（b）非常成功，即使他们不搬家，风投也会为他们提供资金，那么他们就可以拒绝这样的报价。

How much would it cost to grow a startup to that point?

将一家初创公司发展到这个程度需要多少钱？

A minimum of several hundred thousand dollars.

最少也要几十万元。

Wufoo seem to have rooted themselves in Tampa on $118k, but they're an extreme case.

Wufoo 似乎已经以 11.8 万美元在坦帕扎根，但他们是一个极端的例子。

On average it would take at least half a million.

平均而言，至少需要五十万。

So if it seems too good to be true to think you could grow a local silicon valley by giving startups $15-20k each like Y Combinator, that's because it is.

因此，如果你认为通过向 Y Combinator 这样的初创公司每家提供 15-2 万美元来发展本地硅谷似乎好得令人难以置信，那是因为事实确实如此。

To make them stick around you'd have to give

为了让他们坚持下去，你必须付出

them at least 20 times that much.

他们至少是这个数字的20倍。

However, even that is an interesting prospect.

然而，即便如此，这也是一个有趣的前景。

Suppose to be on the safe side it would cost a million dollars per startup.

假设保险起见，每个初创公司的成本为一百万美元。

If you could get startups to stick to your town for a million apiece, then for a billion dollars you could bring in a thousand startups.

如果你能以每家 100 万美元的价格让初创公司留在你的城镇，那么用 10 亿美元你就可以引进 1000 家初创公司。

That probably wouldn't push you past Silicon Valley itself, but it might get you second place.

这可能不会让你超越硅谷本身，但它可能会让你排名第二。

For the price of a football stadium, any town that was decent to

对于一个足球场的价格来说，任何一个有实力的城镇

live in could make itself one of the biggest startup hubs in the world.

居住可以使自己成为世界上最大的创业中心之一。

What's more, it wouldn't take very long.

更重要的是，这不会花很长时间。

You could probably do it in five years.

你也许可以在五年内做到这一点。

During the term of one mayor.

在一位市长任期内。

And it would get easier over time, because the more startups you had in town, the less it would take to get new ones to move there.

随着时间的推移，这会变得更容易，因为城里的初创公司越多，吸引新公司搬到那里所需的时间就越少。

By the time you had a thousand startups in town, the VCs wouldn't be trying so hard to get them to move to Silicon Valley; instead they'd be opening

当你在镇上拥有一千家初创公司时，风投就不会那么努力地让他们搬到硅谷；他们会这么做。相反他们会开放

local offices.

当地办事处。

Then you'd really be in good shape.

那么你的状态就真的很好了。

You'd have started a self-sustaining chain reaction like the one that drives the Valley.

你会启动一种自我维持的连锁反应，就像驱动硅谷的连锁反应一样。

___ But now comes the hard part.

___ 但现在困难的部分来了。

You have to pick the startups.

你必须选择初创公司。

How do you do that?

你是怎么做到的？

Picking startups is a rare and valuable skill, and the handful of people who have it are not readily hireable.

选择初创公司是一项稀有而宝贵的技能，而拥有这种技能的人并不容易被雇用。

And this skill is so hard to measure that if a government did try to

这种技能很难衡量，如果政府确实尝试

hire people with it, they'd almost certainly get the wrong ones.

如果用它来雇用员工，他们几乎肯定会招错人。

For example, a city could give money to a VC fund to establish a local branch, and let them make the choices.

例如，一个城市可以向风险投资基金提供资金，在当地设立分支机构，然后让他们做出选择。

But only a bad VC fund would take that deal.

但只有糟糕的风险投资基金才会接受这笔交易。

They wouldn't seem bad to the city officials.

对于市政府官员来说，他们似乎并不坏。

They'd seem very impressive.

他们看起来非常令人印象深刻。

But they'd be bad at picking startups.

但他们不擅长挑选初创公司。

That's the characteristic failure mode of VCs.

这就是风险投资的典型故障模式。

All VCs look impressive to limited partners.

对于有限合伙人来说，所有风险投资看起来都令人印象深刻。

The difference between

之间的区别

the good ones and the bad ones only becomes visible in the other half of their jobs: choosing and advising startups.

好的和坏的只有在他们的另一半工作中才能显现出来：选择初创公司并为其提供建议。

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