It could be the key to creating clusters of innovation as well as a slew of more venture capital jobs.
Author and entrepreneur Steve Blank writes about it in a recent post on his blog, reprinted in Venture Beat. Namely, the “pay it forward” culture of Silicon Valley that has enabled so many of today’s household-name companies to flourish.
He tells the story of Walker’s Wagon Wheel bar and restaurant in Mountain View, CA, where employees of Fairchild Semiconductor hung out in the 1960s. There, they readily swapped stories of technical problems and fixes with co-workers and even competitors struggling to make next generation semiconductors.
More importantly, he takes us back to the early 1970s, when even the CEOs of the largest Silicon Valley companies would take phone calls and meeting with young and passionate entrepreneurs bursting with ideas. In 1975, for instance, a young entrepreneur phoned up Bill Noyce, who was then Founder/CEO of Intel, and asked for his advice. Noyce liked the kid, and spent the next few years mentoring him. That entrepreneur was Steve Jobs.
“Bob Noyce took me under his wing, I was young, in my twenties. He was in his early fifties. He tried to give me the lay of the land, give me a perspective that I could only partially understand,” Jobs said. “You can’t really understand what is going on now unless you understand what came before.”
Today, politicians and corporate CEOs wring their hands and wonder what can be done to kick-start job creation in the U.S. So it may be worth noting, as Steve Blank points out, that as a group, the CEOs of today’s successful companies have a body of knowledge that entrepreneurs “would pay anything to learn.” The best investment in creating a startup culture would be to share this knowledge with a hungry new generation of innovators.
“Today, in spite of the fact that the valley is crawling with IP lawyers, the tradition of helping and sharing continues. The restaurants and locations may have changed … but the notion of competitors getting together and helping each other and experienced business execs offering contacts and advice has continued,” writes Blank.
How about you? Have you been fortunate enough to have a mentor or key business leader foster your venture capital career? Or if you’re a senior executive, have you taken the time to pay-it-forward to younger workers? Add your comments below.
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