Entrepreneurship, the Wall Street Journal, and the Top 50 Startups

So you want to start a high tech company?  We would strongly suggest moving to California.  The Wall Street Journal recently published it’s choices as the top 50 venture capital backed startups in America.  Thirty seven of them are in California.  Most of those are in Northern California, in or around Silicon Valley.

Even the state that is operated based on the power of the public sector unions, and is almost bankrupt, California is leading the way in advanced technology and turning ideas into successful companies.  Talk about “Damn the Torpedoes, Full Speed Ahead”, California entrepreneurs has overcome government mismanagement and economic headwinds in a big way.  And their payoff has been big as well.  Some of the top 50 companies have already been sold, and some are going public with huge returns on the investor’s capital.

With 74% of the top startups coming from California, it begs the question: Why not the rest of the country?  The vaunted second “silicon valley” in and around Austin, Texas only has one on the list.  There are NONE from the Midwest, and only one from the former high tech corridor in Boston.

So what does California have that the rest of the country doesn’t? It has an entrepreneurial mindset and a willingness to roll the dice.  Silicon Valley venture capitalists have made so much money investing and trusting some of the finest minds (think Steve Jobs) that they are willing to gamble even more. Mark Zuckerberg may have hatched his Facebook idea at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but he moved back to Northern California to start his company.

California also has this little institution called Stanford University.  It not only has a good football team, but it is a virtual high tech incubator that is changing the world.  Graduate software engineers and big thinkers are pouring out of Stanford more than any of those other prestigious institutions, and starting companies at a frenetic pace.

Will any of the other vaunted universities around the rest of the country stand up and be counted?  Most of us are begging for job creation, but don’t understand how to make it happen.  Stanford University, venture capitalists, and the plethora of high tech entrepreneurs spawned there do understand, and are making it happen.

Bring other universities, venture capitalists, angel investors, and aggressive entrepreneurs together, and in five years, the Wall Street Journal’s new top 50 may come from the rest of the country.