Silicon Valley or London for Indian Entrepreneurs?
With the heads of Microsoft and Google being Indian, would you as an entrepreneur be better off in Silicon Valley?
12 years ago in the glare of the Financial Times, I topped their competition to predict the FTSE 100 over a 12 months period. I came within 0.5% of the final value. Others who participated in the competition, such a market commentator John Lee, went on to become Lord John Lee. Another still Neil Woodford, launched Woodford Funds, managing hundreds of millions of dollars – even though I trounced his performance.
It taught me some important lessons:
1. How you look matters more than performance – old and white helps. Hey, I am in California and the Oscars prove that point
2. A pissed off entrepreneur (me) usually beats the conventional same old, same old
So would I have been better off in Silicon Valley? Speaking to an Indian friend of my wife who has lived there for 13 years – the answer is clearly no!
1. Fintech (financial technology) is at its global home in the UK
2. The Indians in the Valley are IT geeks, they usually don’t really care about anything other than working on their geek projects. Most entrepreneurs want geeks to work for them, not wanting to be a geek themselves
3. Life is pretty dull in the Valley. It’s a small cliquey cabal. Sure if you love small village feel, it’s great. But if you want the big City life too – then nahhh thanks SV.
4. Racism – says my friend is alive and well in the Valley. He far preferred his time in London.
5. Friends – he had none in 13 years. It was the nature of the place he said.
This is something of a relief of course. I don’t need to uproot my London life. Even on a short visit to the Valley it became clear it’s a dull place. I love my geeky obsession, don’t get me wrong. But I also think in Financial Technology the place to be is London.
Silicon Valley is just too often obsessed presently with crazily valued apps. I was always led to believe that I will have to work twice as hard to get ahead if I am to overcome the challenges of not being native white.
Well my performance in the Financial Times suggests I’ll have to be 10 times better. Fine. It’ll mean the results are 10 times better and the product will be too. It annoys the hell out of me that in a competition by the most respected financial paper in the world, and a competition held over 12 months, that people who underperform are rewarded.
Failing upwards is key to success apparently – you can see why bankers get paid millions for not delivering you a good return. It’s where I’ve been going wrong – charging too little for doing too much good. In future I should charge a fortune for being rubbish – people seem to buy that!
