Victor W. Hwang and Greg Horowitt
The Rainforest: The Secret to Building the Next Silicon Valley
ISBN: 978-0-615-58672-4
Every local entrepreneurial ecosystem in the last couple of decades have tried to replicate the success of Silicon Valley. How many different locations have you heard of that have tried to re-brand themselves “Silicon ___” based on the local geography? For a while, Iowa and adjacent states were called the “Silicon Prairie” Ecosystem builders have tried to bring all of the pieces together to recreate Silicon Valley, but for the most part, these efforts have not worked. Beyond the individual parts, what else made Silicon Valley the leader in technology and entrepreneurship for the last few decades?
Victor Hwang and Greg Horowitt attempt to explain the synergy needed to recreate that success in The Rainforest: The Secret to Building the Next Silicon Valley. Their idea of “The Rainforest” encompasses everything to do with entrepreneurship, and is larger than either a singular startup community or the broader entrepreneurial ecosystem. Essentially, The Rainforest is the highest level of organization – the ecosystem of ecosystems. Hwang and Horowitt introduce many of the same players present in startup communities and show how all of these players must be present and intertwined across an entire network. Geography is not the issue it once was – the people and the connections play a larger role than the actual location.
Downplaying geography as the necessary component to recreating Silicon Valley in your community runs contrary to the work of most economic development organizations. However, the authors gave several examples why focusing on the geography of an entrepreneurial ecosystem is the wrong approach. Instead, the focus of economic developers and ecosystem builders should be the “keystones” – a handful of people who are entrepreneurial superconnectors, bridging boundaries to bring together the right people at the right time. Successful ecosystems have multiple “keystones” accessible to the broader community.
This book is an excellent companion to Brad Feld’s Startup Communities, which I reviewed in 2019. Feld covered the basics of the startup community, including the parts and players necessary to facilitate a successful community. The Rainforest goes beyond this and explains how those parts can work across communities and continents, depending on the work of “keystones” in the community. Both of these books should be on your reading list if you are interested in understanding how the entrepreneurial ecosystem works – I would read Feld’s book first, and then follow up with The Rainforest.
Unlike Startup Communities, this book felt very “textbook-ish” and isn’t really meant to be consumed in one or two sittings. There is a lot of information covered in each chapter, and could work well as the subject for discussion in a book club. This was one of the few books that I’ve reviewed that I ended up taking some notes while reading. The information contained within is crucial to anyone seeking to understand how to improve the environment for entrepreneurship in the community, and how the connections between communities are necessary for each of those communities to prosper.
Overall, 10/10 would highly recommend to entrepreneurial ecosystem builders and other economic development officials looking to build their local startup communities by working together with other communities in the area. More than likely, you have a “keystone” or two in your own community, and you may not even know it. Entrepreneurial ecosystem builders have a great deal of work to do in their communities, and this book is an amazing resource for those who aim to build the community into a place where anything is possible.