Trinity’s Fred Wang on Thinking Outside the Silicon Valley Box

Trinity Ventures partner Fred Wang (BVBigelow photo)

their investment, and lower operating costs can give startups more time to execute their business plans.

Wang also offered some tips to entrepreneurs for building startup communities outside Silicon Valley, beginning with the key principles that Brad Feld lays out in his book Startup Communities:

—Entrepreneurs should lead startup communities—not government officials, investors, VCs, or other service providers.

—To build a sustainable ecosystem, startup communities need to take a 20-year view. So leaders need to be committed to the city and the startup ecosystem.

—Startup communities should be inclusive, not exclusive. It takes all kinds of people to build an ecosystem.

—Startup communities need to engage the entire entrepreneurial stack, using events like Startup Weekend, incubators, and accelerator programs to provide meaningful content.

Wang added some of his own advice for entrepreneurs in secondary markets.

—Get to know the local startup godfathers and godmothers in your community. Use networking opportunities to meet fellow entrepreneurs to gain technology and business insights and to learn best practices.

—Recruit talented employees wherever you can find them. “A lot of companies inside and outside Silicon Valley get caught in this trap of thinking that everyone [you hire] has to be from the local community,” says Wang.

—Get close to your customers. You don’t need to be physically close, but you need to have a deep understanding of their businesses and needs.

—Build long-term relationships with venture investors. “A lot of the companies we fund are started by entrepreneurs we’ve known for a really long time. What we like to do is meet entrepreneurs long before they’re out with their pitch hats on.”

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Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.