Old HP Stock Certificate

Fred has a very interesting post about the Darwinian Evolution of Startup Hubs, it is very poignant and relevant for Iceland. I think there are a couple of things of note in that post. First is the evolution of the companies themselves, if you look at them closely they resemble the hardware to software stack in the technology development cycle. I have written about this before, I believe the next wave of companies that are going to generate wealth are those that are building things on top of the new infrastructure of Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple iOS, Android, Twitteretc but this cannot happen in Iceland without the ecosystem that Fred is talking about.

Creator of first semi conductor

I have always felt that the first wave of entrepreneurs and those who created disproportionate wealth in Iceland have just not plowed enough of that back into the system to create the new seeds. In order for the ecosystem to thrive, there needs to be a evolution of industries just like what happened in Silicon Valley and much like -what is happening in New York and other places. The comments section of AVC.com for the above post has very interesting discussions for example the location of Toronto is considered and how RIM has not created a new wave of companies and teams. I believe in addition to the 7 things that I wrote about earlier, it is important for the previous generations of a community to contribute time, money and wisdom into the next generation to create a fledging ecosystem. Silicon Valley is the envy of many regions because the entrepreneurs who started there continue to plow back their money, time and wisdom into Silicon Valley. That in my opinion is one of the secrete sauce of Silicon Valley. Why is this hard to replicate in other places? Who knows? At the least we know one things about Icelandersthat they always come back and I hope that they will invest their talent, money, time and wisdom back into the society that they come from not into the usual suspects but into value creating companies of the future.

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