Replicating Silicon Valley
VC bloggers are a growing category and I struggle to keep track of everyone who is doing it now. But honestly there are few, if any, that do it as well as Paul Graham who isn’t really a VC and who isn’t really a blogger either.
Paul is an entrepreneur who has formed Y Combinator to “microfund” first time entrepreneurs who are willing to drop everything and work night and day on an idea. I think Paul is still an entrepreneur at heart, and he’s playing a game most often considered angel investing. But I call him a VC because I think our industry needs more people like Paul working in it.
Paul is also not really a blogger. He doesn’t post in the conventional sense. He writes long essays when he feels the urge to post them. He doesn’t seem to be caught up in the techcrunch/memorandum/technorati groupthink which is refreshing.
So when Paul writes one of his long missives, I read them.
His latest two essays are really one long think piece on replicating Silicon Valley here in the US and overseas.
Why Startups Condense In America
I do take a bit of offense at Paul’s comments about New York City in this post on the Union Square Ventures weblog. I believe that after Silicon Valley and Boston, there is no city in the US that has a more vibrant startup economy than New York City and it is often underlooked as it was by Paul in his first essay. So I had to defend my turf.