Silicon Valley’s derivative venture opportunity

And why we need to broaden our focus beyond primary startups

Silicon Valley is the world’s largest innovation hub, and it doesn’t look likely to implode or shrink anytime soon. We have gathered in one place all the essential ingredients to make fertile soil: failure-tolerant investors + great universities + attractive climate and location = mecca conditions attracting brilliant minds and crazy dreamers.

Let’s not break it. Actually, like any great natural ecosystem, it’s always partly broken and it’s always breaking down in places and repairing itself organically. The tech giants have tilted the landscape, causing more serious problems than just a temporary unpopularity of billionaires and social media addiction. They’ve built a concentration of power that is unhealthy for innovation and competition. Venture capital becomes hesitant to fund projects that threaten the royal palaces. Historically we’re healthier when we do exactly that.

Another place that we’re broken is diversity. When you first move here you may feel we’ve done a great job hiring a diverse workforce. Then you realize that beyond the Indian people and the Chinese people, it’s all white people and a dusting of Europeans. No Latinos. No black people. No older people. No re-careering people from the corn belt…