By Kartik Donepudi, VI Form

The Causes of Silicon Valley’s Success

There are 472 million entrepreneurs in the world. Each year, those entrepreneurs found a total of 305 million startups, and 1.35 million of those startups are tech related. However, entrepreneurship is a risky business; in 2019, approximately 90% of startups, defined as businesses with fewer than 500 employees, failed. With such a high failure rate, it is imperative that tech startup founders do whatever is necessary to ensure the survival of their companies. They must have funding, talent, space, and proximity to resources like academic research and laboratories. Accordingly, it is of great importance that tech startup founders find the right location to set up shop.

Imagine you are a tech startup founder with the next big idea in your back pocket. You know your startup’s product will be wildly successful. You simply need the funding to get started, talented employees to begin research and development, and a place to open company headquarters where you can find a wide customer base and easy access to resources. Where do you go? The answer is the home of today’s greatest startup ecosystem: Silicon Valley.

Located in the San Francisco Bay Area, Silicon Valley has been a center of technological innovation since the late 1800s and produces many of the world’s largest tech firms. Modern giants like Google, Amazon, and Facebook find their homes in the Valley alongside pioneer companies of previous eras in technology; older firms like Lockheed Martin, Intel, and HP have blossomed in the region since their foundings in the mid 1900s. An abundance of local talent stemming from schools like Stanford University has fueled the region’s startups for more than a century, and in the modern age, talent from the best colleges around the world flocks to Silicon Valley to make it big as the next tech leaders.

Kartik Donepudi is a VI Form boarding student from Tampa, FL. He enjoys rowing, singing, and filmmaking, and he is an avid programmer.