Categories: Articles

Is Silicon Valley Losing Its Shine And Innovation?

There’s gold in them there hills…

In another time, people put their lives at risk to head out to the wild west. The risk? The reward? Gold! Opportunity… a new life… the richness. Sounded so exciting. For the past few decades a similar gold rush has been taking place out west in Silicon Valley. All you need is MacBook, a Moleskine, an idea and a rented garage, and you could be the next Google… Facebook… whatever. Valuations on tech companies created both public market bubbles, and a flood of cash to the small, few who were brave enough to code and build a business. Still, to this day, many people dream of building (or working for) one of these unicorns (a company with a valuation north of a billion dollars). Many have tried to capture this experience on film. Many have failed.

The Down Round.

TechCrunch recently published this short documentary called, The Down Round. It’s six episodes and clocks in at under hour. From their website:

“Silicon Valley is like no other place in the world right now. The Bay Area has been booming with ideas and innovation for the past decade. But in 2016, the IPO market wilted and unicorns suddenly had to prove their worth. Startups that had raised hundreds of millions of dollars began shuttering and investors are nervous. In ‘The Down Round’ series, we talked to entrepreneurs and venture capitalists about what happened and what’s next for startups, real estate and Silicon Valley as a whole.”

TL;DR: There is lot of problems brewing out West. Please watch and share this series… The Down Round – TechCrunch.

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.