On Copying Silicon Valley in Australia

Simon Sharwood for the Register:

…when I visited San Francisco last August for VMworld 2013, I sought out some real, live, Silicon Valley venture capitalists at the parties they throw to publicise their funded companies and build their eventual IPO price. I asked them what prospects Australia has, in their opinion, of replicating Silicon Valley’s success by adopting the startup agenda.

Long story short: zero multiplied by the cube-root of zero.

I thought this was a pretty thought-provoking, if slightly damning piece. Every city wants to become ‘The Silicon Valley of [country]’, and every country wants a home-grown Google or Facebook. But we’re not the US, so why should we try to mimic the Silicon Valley model?