We have talked a lot on this blog about the concentration of economic activity in global cities. Here is an old post about a paper called “winner-take-all-cities”, which documents the overrepresentation of talent, economic activity, innovation, and wealth creation in a select number of alpha cities.

But this same phenomenon is playing out in a myriad of different ways. Aaron Renn calls this the “superstar effect” and has been writing about it for years. Another more recent example is this post by Richard Kerby called: Where did you go to school?

Kerby looked at where venture capitalists in the US went to school and discovered that around 40% of them have gone to one of two schools: Stanford or Harvard. His argument is that not only is the venture capital industry lacking in gender and racial diversity, but it’s also lacking in cognitive diversity.

My point with this post, though, is one of hyper-concentration. Tech is a dominant force in today’s economy. And in 2017, nearly 45% of all venture capital investment in the US went to companies located in the Bay Area – meaning San Francisco and San Jose.

So here is an example of a select number of schools training a select number of minds that then go on to invest in a select number of cities. Fred Wilson, who is a venture capitalist, has a good response to this problem of diversity in the VC industry.

But, of course, this is bigger than just the VC business.

Mary Meeker – who is a partner in the VC firm Kleiner Perkins – just recently released her annual Internet Trends report. 

I’ve pasted the table of contents above so you can quickly decide if you’d like to spend your time going through it. The entire report is over 350 slides.

If you can’t see the embedded slideshow below or if you’d like to access the reports from previous years, click here.

[slideshare id=KGiWuuYFlhbQBC&w=595&h=485&fb=0&mw=0&mh=0&style=border:1px solid #CCC; border-width:1px; margin-bottom:5px; max-width: 100%;&sc=no]

Internet Trends 2017 Report from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

Venture capitalist Matt Turck has a post up on his blog that is packed full of information about the New York City tech ecosystem. (He has also written similar posts about Berlin and Paris.)

His overall thesis is that New York – as a startup/tech hub – is only now starting to catch up to the hype of 4 or 5 years ago. He now refers to NYC as the de facto Number 2 after the Bay Area.

If you’re interested in all of this, you can go read his full post. But I would like to pull out 2 points. The first is about the “rinse and repeat” cycle that happens over time that allows cities to become substantive startup hubs:

As any student of emerging tech ecosystems knows, the key dynamic to success is the “rinse and repeat” cycle. You need several waves of successful tech companies to go through the whole cycle of founding, financing, scaling and significant exit.   Post-exit, the hope is that successful founders, employees and investors then contribute back both money and expertise to the next generation of tech startups, a few of which eventually become highly successful themselves and then provide money and expertise to the following generation.

The trouble is, each successive cycle takes years, because the average successful startup takes 5 to 10 years to get to a large exit.

One key reason the Silicon Valley has become such a powerful network is that this “rinse and repeat” cycle has been happening there for decades, at least since the 1940s and 1950s (Hewlett Packard), with a real acceleration in the 1970s and 1980s (Apple IPO, founding of Kleiner Perkins, etc).

I’ve written about this idea before, but didn’t refer to it as “rinse and repeat.” I’m thinking about adopting that terminology going forward.

The second is a list of New York-based startups. Matt uses it as an example of how entrepreneurial activity in New York is operating across a broad cross-section of different industries. That’s an important characteristic to identify.

However, I also thought you might find it valuable to see what startups are out there, particularly if you happen to work in one of the below verticals/horizontals. I certainly went right to the real estate line.

Fintech: Betterment, IEX, Fundera, Bond, Orchard, Bread
Health: Oscar, Flatiron Health, ZocDoc, Hometeam, Recombine, Celmatix, BioDigital, ZipDrug
Education: General Assembly, Schoology, Knewton, Skillshare, Flatiron School, Codecademy
Real estate: WeWork, HighTower, VTS, Compass, Common, Reonomy
Enterprise SaaS: InVision, NewsCred, Sprinklr, Namely, JustWorks, Greenhouse, Percolate, Mark43, Movable Ink
Commerce infrastructure: Bluecore, Custora, Welcome Commerce
Marketplaces: Kickstarter, Vroom, 1stdibs
On Demand: Handy, Via, Managed by Q, Hello Alfred
Food: Blue Apron, Plated, Maple
IoT/Hardware: littleBits, Canary, Peloton, Shapeways, SOLS, Estimote, Dash, GoTenna, Raden, Ringly, Augury, Drone Racing League
AR/VR/3D: Sketchfab, Floored

I was happy to see my friends at Floored in the above list. They are under AR/VR/3D, but they service the real estate industry.

We have talked a lot on this blog about the concentration of economic activity in global cities. Here is an old post about a paper called “winner-take-all-cities”, which documents the overrepresentation of talent, economic activity, innovation, and wealth creation in a select number of alpha cities.

But this same phenomenon is playing out in a myriad of different ways. Aaron Renn calls this the “superstar effect” and has been writing about it for years. Another more recent example is this post by Richard Kerby called: Where did you go to school?

Kerby looked at where venture capitalists in the US went to school and discovered that around 40% of them have gone to one of two schools: Stanford or Harvard. His argument is that not only is the venture capital industry lacking in gender and racial diversity, but it’s also lacking in cognitive diversity.

My point with this post, though, is one of hyper-concentration. Tech is a dominant force in today’s economy. And in 2017, nearly 45% of all venture capital investment in the US went to companies located in the Bay Area – meaning San Francisco and San Jose.

So here is an example of a select number of schools training a select number of minds that then go on to invest in a select number of cities. Fred Wilson, who is a venture capitalist, has a good response to this problem of diversity in the VC industry.

But, of course, this is bigger than just the VC business.

Mary Meeker – who is a partner in the VC firm Kleiner Perkins – just recently released her annual Internet Trends report. 

I’ve pasted the table of contents above so you can quickly decide if you’d like to spend your time going through it. The entire report is over 350 slides.

If you can’t see the embedded slideshow below or if you’d like to access the reports from previous years, click here.

[slideshare id=KGiWuuYFlhbQBC&w=595&h=485&fb=0&mw=0&mh=0&style=border:1px solid #CCC; border-width:1px; margin-bottom:5px; max-width: 100%;&sc=no]

Internet Trends 2017 Report from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

Venture capitalist Matt Turck has a post up on his blog that is packed full of information about the New York City tech ecosystem. (He has also written similar posts about Berlin and Paris.)

His overall thesis is that New York – as a startup/tech hub – is only now starting to catch up to the hype of 4 or 5 years ago. He now refers to NYC as the de facto Number 2 after the Bay Area.

If you’re interested in all of this, you can go read his full post. But I would like to pull out 2 points. The first is about the “rinse and repeat” cycle that happens over time that allows cities to become substantive startup hubs:

As any student of emerging tech ecosystems knows, the key dynamic to success is the “rinse and repeat” cycle. You need several waves of successful tech companies to go through the whole cycle of founding, financing, scaling and significant exit.   Post-exit, the hope is that successful founders, employees and investors then contribute back both money and expertise to the next generation of tech startups, a few of which eventually become highly successful themselves and then provide money and expertise to the following generation.

The trouble is, each successive cycle takes years, because the average successful startup takes 5 to 10 years to get to a large exit.

One key reason the Silicon Valley has become such a powerful network is that this “rinse and repeat” cycle has been happening there for decades, at least since the 1940s and 1950s (Hewlett Packard), with a real acceleration in the 1970s and 1980s (Apple IPO, founding of Kleiner Perkins, etc).

I’ve written about this idea before, but didn’t refer to it as “rinse and repeat.” I’m thinking about adopting that terminology going forward.

The second is a list of New York-based startups. Matt uses it as an example of how entrepreneurial activity in New York is operating across a broad cross-section of different industries. That’s an important characteristic to identify.

However, I also thought you might find it valuable to see what startups are out there, particularly if you happen to work in one of the below verticals/horizontals. I certainly went right to the real estate line.

Fintech: Betterment, IEX, Fundera, Bond, Orchard, Bread
Health: Oscar, Flatiron Health, ZocDoc, Hometeam, Recombine, Celmatix, BioDigital, ZipDrug
Education: General Assembly, Schoology, Knewton, Skillshare, Flatiron School, Codecademy
Real estate: WeWork, HighTower, VTS, Compass, Common, Reonomy
Enterprise SaaS: InVision, NewsCred, Sprinklr, Namely, JustWorks, Greenhouse, Percolate, Mark43, Movable Ink
Commerce infrastructure: Bluecore, Custora, Welcome Commerce
Marketplaces: Kickstarter, Vroom, 1stdibs
On Demand: Handy, Via, Managed by Q, Hello Alfred
Food: Blue Apron, Plated, Maple
IoT/Hardware: littleBits, Canary, Peloton, Shapeways, SOLS, Estimote, Dash, GoTenna, Raden, Ringly, Augury, Drone Racing League
AR/VR/3D: Sketchfab, Floored

I was happy to see my friends at Floored in the above list. They are under AR/VR/3D, but they service the real estate industry.