The degree to which the premise of this story (which has been printed elsewhere) is absolutely ridiculous, is pretty astounding.
The premise, of course, is that Mark somehow "got away" from Boston and was always destined to be more "successful" [your definition here] than any other founder. So there are really two main points: that this proves Boston needs to catch up with the Valley, and that there's another Mark lurking out there somewhere that must have been missed.
Let's start with the first part. Boston has needed to catch up with the Valley since the decline of Digital Equipment Corporation, if not before. That was, if I've got my facts straight, in 1992. So it's been nineteen years that Boston's tech scene has been dying. When I was at Harvard trying to get undergraduates excited about technology entrepreneurship in 2003, the club ended up electing me President because only eight people showed up and half of them were my friends. Apparently things have gotten better since then, but I'm still on the Harvard entrepreneurs mailing list and there's not much going on.
As for Mark, I've said plenty in the past. The key points are A) that people like Mark don't innovate; they copy; and B) if as much money was poured into another company as has been poured into Facebook, then we'd all be talking about that company and founder instead. (Twitter, anyone?)
If VCs are just looking to fund copycats, that explains an awful lot, but they should just admit it and stop pretending that they exist to support entrepreneurs. In the meantime, their returns will continue to decline as they ignore people who actually do come up with novel approaches to problem solving in favor of the coy and disingenuous who can convince millions to waste their time in a uniform manner.
There are a lot of bad ideas in Silicon Valley and a lot of bad ideas in Boston. But there are definitely some good ones, too. If VCs can't distinguish between them, they should either just fund everything in the hope that they'll just get lucky, or step aside and get out of the way.
> The key point is that people like Mark don't innovate.
James and Orville Wright didn't invent the airplane.
Henry Ford didn't invent the automobile.
Thomas Edison didn't invent the lightbulb.
Ray Croc didn't "invent" McDonald's.
James Walton didn't invent EDI or data-driven retailing.
etc.
But as an investor, you sure wouldn't go broke investing in them. That's the kind of person you want to set up shop in your town if you care about the economic benefits, not necessarily another PhD developing technology years before its time. ("MIT graduates develop technology. Harvard graduates hire MIT graduates and build businesses." was the old saying.)
I think Boston's non-life-sciences tech scene is doomed for a variety of reasons, but thinking everyone needs to invent one amazing new scientific advance ("idea") to build a world-changing business, vs. lots of correct, incremental decisions along the way ("execution"), is a major reason.
And your point is that Facebook isn't a product "of unambiguous value to society" I suppose? And that Zuckerberg's supposed lack of "innovation" is the cause of this deficiency?
Facebook may not be your thing, but I'd have to say the fact that tens of millions of people enjoy the benefits that Facebook brings to their lives, enough to visit the site multiple times a day pretty much proves its value to society.
And I believe pretty strongly that taking ideas that were innovated by other people and improving upon them counts as innovation in its own right. Facebook may not have done anything earth-shatteringly new, but what it did do, it did better.
Actually, Facebook has changed how hundreds of millions of people interact with each other.
I find it curious that the haters always want to take facebook down a notch for not being innovative. I haven't logged into my account in several months, but I still respect what facebook represents in the evolution of the Internet.
I have no idea whether or not you're right about Mark / FB, but even if you are correct, I think the issue raised by the author still stands.
Let's say Facebook owes all its success to getting a ton of money from investors - any other social networking company would have achieved the same level of success with the same amount of money.
The question still remains - why did Boston VCs not invest in Facebook like SV investors did? Or some other similar company (which according to your theory, would have given them the same outcome as what SV investors in FB got)? Clearly they are worse off for not having done so.
Not claiming that Boston VCs should have been expected to invest in FB - just saying that the underlying issue raised by the article stands regardless of why you think Facebook is successful.
The premise, of course, is that Mark somehow "got away" from Boston and was always destined to be more "successful" [your definition here] than any other founder. So there are really two main points: that this proves Boston needs to catch up with the Valley, and that there's another Mark lurking out there somewhere that must have been missed.
Let's start with the first part. Boston has needed to catch up with the Valley since the decline of Digital Equipment Corporation, if not before. That was, if I've got my facts straight, in 1992. So it's been nineteen years that Boston's tech scene has been dying. When I was at Harvard trying to get undergraduates excited about technology entrepreneurship in 2003, the club ended up electing me President because only eight people showed up and half of them were my friends. Apparently things have gotten better since then, but I'm still on the Harvard entrepreneurs mailing list and there's not much going on.
As for Mark, I've said plenty in the past. The key points are A) that people like Mark don't innovate; they copy; and B) if as much money was poured into another company as has been poured into Facebook, then we'd all be talking about that company and founder instead. (Twitter, anyone?)
If VCs are just looking to fund copycats, that explains an awful lot, but they should just admit it and stop pretending that they exist to support entrepreneurs. In the meantime, their returns will continue to decline as they ignore people who actually do come up with novel approaches to problem solving in favor of the coy and disingenuous who can convince millions to waste their time in a uniform manner.
There are a lot of bad ideas in Silicon Valley and a lot of bad ideas in Boston. But there are definitely some good ones, too. If VCs can't distinguish between them, they should either just fund everything in the hope that they'll just get lucky, or step aside and get out of the way.