Re: What’s the Future of D.C. Technology?

Kiem Tjong — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 13:14:44 -0000

Nick is right on the second reason, that of our culture of risk.....what do you expect when 80% of all business in our town originates from the US government....US gov rightfully buys products and services that are "proven" and have been operational for years....discourages risk....you get penalized here for doing risky things.

Also, that stat about the high density of technology specialists and researchers in DC is misleading....we do have the highest concentration in the country of advanced and post graduate degrees....please think about what that says about our tolerance for risk....go count how many advanced degrees there are among the entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley.....look up the number of bachelor vs advanced degrees held by groundbreaking entrepreneurs in the US overall and that should tell you something....think about why a person who has invested many years of her life in an advanced education should want to throw that all away to go start a new company as compared with a person who barely or did not get a bachelor's education....look at the mindset and personality of an entrepreneur and realize that here in DC many of us who like careful analysis, thorough planning and time for extensive documentation tend to frown on that.

...there are many other reasons why we do not have the culture and resulting business community in DC that they have in Silicon Valley but they are too numerous for me to commit here. Rather than try to imitate Silicon Valley's model we should try a different one that suits our culture and demographic more easily.

K. Tjong

Re: What’s the Future of D.C. Technology?

Kiem Tjong — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 15:44:44 -0000

Nick: Re the line in your article: "we won’t see the influx of continuous web focused venture funding."

Is that referring to funding of web technology or web 2.0 startups? Because i do think our local culture is not in sync with the web category....we should do better with more traditional techs like biomed or IT hardware.

The formula the guys out west are using for Web2.0 is "think it up, build it, run it, monitor it and if it does not get traction real fast (like a month) move on to the next thing". That mindset will not do well here, but with low barriers of entry you really do need speed for web 2.0 I think we are thorough but not speedy.

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Re: What’s the Future of D.C. Technology?

Re: What’s the Future of D.C. Technology?