Et Tu, Gainesville?
The back-to-basics approach followed by investors in Boulder-based companies is a blueprint for advancing Gainesville’s entrepreneurial activities. Although
Foundry Group is profiled in a recent New York Times article
Does "Boulder-style" suit us? We already have our own investing style and successful approach for creating and nurturing startups here in Gainesville. Let’s
build on that foundation and accelerate the pace at which companies get built,
the frequency of which they receive investor capital, and the willingness of
the entire community to collaborate in advancing an ecosystem that supports startups.
This ecosystem doesn’t guarantee success. Often, an effective and active ecosystem accelerates a startups demise. But that’s part of the Darwinian selection process at work in the Knowledge & Innovation economy. Here in Gatorland we’re not accustomed to failure – indeed, we’ve been spoiled by our sports teams’ “failure is not an option” mantra – yet failure in innovation hotbeds like Silicon Valley is expected. And tolerated. That’s because that type of failure gives creative rebirth to ideas, people, products, processes and companies.
Richard Florida writes of “talent, technology and tolerance” in his book, The Rise of the Creative Class. We have bunches of the first two. But how are we when it comes to the third, tolerance? That is, how is our tolerance for risk-taking entrepreneurs, cutting-edge ideas, new processes and applications for existing
technologies, the quest for new markets with next generation products, and the
runaway ambition that makes next decades opportunities reachable next year?
If Boulder can succeed with back-to-basic investing fundamentals and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are known for pursuing big, hairy audacious goals, what is Gainesville’s reputation? Is it harnessing and supporting our razor-sharp academic and entrepreneurial talent? Is it commercializing our world-class
technologies? Is it making $5K-$10K proof-of-concept investments that assist in transforming technologies-to-products? Is it tolerating failure – the type of
failure that’s in the form of creative destruction – because failure
Gainesville-style is the seed that blossoms into future successes?
Si se puede. Si bedemos.
Comment
-
Comment by David Nessl on May 20, 2010 at 3:52pm -
What I got from the NYT article is that, in comparison to Boulder, Gainesville lacks a couple of the building blocks of a *culture* of entrepreneurism. We have laudably put in place the infrastructure (GAIN, Progress Park, GTEC, etc), and we've gotten Gainesville and Alachua County governments to stop being hostile to startups, and UF has gotten over its "must score big like Gatorade" mentality about patent licensing. But in comparison to Boulder, we have no large company presences (IBM, etc) which tend to generate entrepreneurs who want to escape the corporate world. We can't fix that easily, but all is not lost. Like Boulder, UF's faculty does not yet have entrepreneurism "in their DNA". We can fix that. We need to embark on a program to get UF faculty to just assume that they will create one or more startups in the course of their career at UF. That change in culture is that last piece of the puzzle to make Gainesville an entrepreneurial hotbed.
-
Comment by Dan Rua on May 14, 2010 at 1:12pm -
to touch on just a piece of your post, I think there is room for innovation on the topic of "tolerating failure". Are there creative ways to accelerate a community's tolerance of failure that are revolutionary instead of evolutionary? What would it mean if there were "better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all" awards (badges of honor for entrepreneurial effort) or "safety-net" funding for entrepreneurs that successfully raised $X or employed Y people in a startup.
On that latter point, how might entrepreneurs near and far change their behavior if Gainesville:
1) set aside some portion of the local taxes created by new startup jobs created by an entrepreneur (e.g. there must be some formula to calculate what a new job/salary generates in local taxes)
2) hold that pool as "entrepreneur unemployment" paid to qualifying local entrepreneurs here after a failure (e.g. they must stay local to get the payback and they don't need to move immediately to keep food on the table for themselves/family)
Would that cause entrepreneurs to start more companies, create more jobs, stick around after failures, move to Gainesville from other cities? It would surely put Gainesville on the radar of the nation's entrepreneurs...if you're going to create jobs via startup, create them here!
Events
-
AITP PRESENTS LOU HECKLER
May 21, 2013 from 5:30pm to 8:30pm – University of Florida Hilton Hotel and Conference Center
-
GAIN MONTHLY LUNCHEON SPEAKER SERIES WITH RICH BLASER
May 29, 2013 from 11:30am to 1pm – Carrabba's
-
Emergency Response Business Summit
June 6, 2013 from 10am to 12pm – Alachua County Emergency Operations Center
-
GAIN Unplugged with Rahul Razdan of Ocoos in June!!
June 7, 2013 from 3pm to 4pm – CYM
-
InfoTx: mHealth Summit
July 11, 2013 from 5:30pm to 8pm – Downtown Gainesville
Like GAINnet?
GAIN LUNCHEON
Don't forget to register for the monthly GAIN luncheon! "Inspire, Connect and Educate Entrepreneurs who want to change the world".
Birthdays
Birthdays Today
Birthdays Tomorrow
© 2013 Created by WE|AR Interactive
You need to be a member of GAINnet to add comments!
Join GAINnet