Why the Midwest Is About to Become America's Next Silicon Valley | Hacker News Reader

Why the Midwest Is About to Become America's Next Silicon Valley

forbes.com

8 pointsendswapper10 comments

I wish someone would invent a device that would allow me to roll my eyes even harder at these X is the next Silicon Valley stories.

"The Midwest and Ohio in particular has always had three things going for it in terms of business climate: a cheap, close supply of energy, access to transportation, and a highly trained work force."

And yet the technologically inclined flee for the coasts, where life is expensive. The next Silicon Valley isn't going to be in Nevada, Arizona, Ohio, Kansas; it's probably not going to be in Illinois. It's going to be somewhere with high amenity value to highly productive technical people; i.e., a big international city.

Cleveland, Ohioan here. Just about every tech company requires, and will enforce to the fullest extent, non-competes. We're no where close to being the next silicon valley.

EDIT: typo :(

Let's assume, "Just about every tech company requires, and will enforce to the fullest extent, non-competes," is true.

Why does that mean, the Midwest/Ohio is "no where close to being the next silicone valley." The "e" in "silicone" is yours.

Non-competes are flimsy at best and it really comes down to your ability to litigate.

My admittedly anecdotal evidence is I know very talented people that have left the region to avoid litigation from their former employers and start their own ventures or advance their careers. Perhaps you have a lawyer that can compete with a corporate legal team, most of us do not.

Also, we can't even type "silicon" properly :D

My non-anecdotal evidence: https://techcrunch.com/2016/02/18/silicon-valley-keeps-winni...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-17/silicon-va...

I understand and empathize if you or your associates have been run out of town as a result of a non-compete. We are probably on the same side in a discussion about non-competes. Thank you for the references, the TC piece in particular. I wasn't aware of that part of CA law.

The Midwest in general, and Ohio in particular, has some great institutions that attract great talent from around the world, i.e. The Cleveland Clinic. The region/Ohio also educates some of the top talent.

While I'm not convinced they will be a viable competitor to Silicon Valley, it is possible. The region's ability to retain talent is the most critical component. Non-competes can make that more difficult. I don't think non-competes alone preclude the region from competing with SV.

I'm from Ohio, I live in California, and I would put a higher priority on weather than non-competes.

I kind of fired off my initial comment and should have maybe thought it through a little more, non competes are one of many reasons holding this region back. Our very risk averse investment culture is probably the biggest one actually (example: http://www.crainscleveland.com/article/20160204/NEWS/1602099...).

And of course as you said, our brutal, brutal winters.

I was more agreeing with knoepfle's comment in rolling my eyes every time one of these articles pops up and gets shared all over my twitter, linkedin and facebook feeds. There's many reasons a lot of our talent flees the west coast or Chicago or NYC, and we'd rather read these fluff pieces instead of acknowledging and trying to fix the issues that would keep them here.

So, it turns out that non-completes are illegal in California.

http://www.rhdtlaw.com/job-hopping-california-right/

There won't be another SV just like there won't be another NYC for Finance in the US - they become monuments and the skills gradually disperse till it just becomes what everyone does (FL, NC, NJ have seen significant uptick in finance from NYC).

The next X is going to be a field currently undervalued, it'll be small companies because the initial opportunities are too small, they'll likely be in an area that is balanced to low cost-proximity to market (if applicable) (does anyone remember what a ghetto Palo Alto and Milpitas was a few decades ago?), and it'll be largely unregulated (that comes after when the big boys want to shut the door behind them).

I'm thinking this next wave could be a few things, but summed up by machine intelligence - machine learning underpinned by IoT, alt energy, energy storage, next gen comms, etc. Or it's local maxima and time for a WWIII board clearing.

One California is more than enough. Please don't come and corrupt the midwest as well. :)

I would have expected it to be in Chattanooga, TN... not Ohio.

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