Forbes Talks with Victor Hwang '96 about Building the Next Silicon Valley

From the Forbes article:

People everywhere keep trying to ­duplicate the success of Silicon Valley as an incubator for innovation and wealth. Victor W. Hwang, a Los Altos Hills, Calif., venture capitalist, has been studying what makes the Valley succeed and so many of its imitators fail, and he’s convinced he has found the answer. Not only that, but he’s putting his ideas to the test, trying to foster new versions of the place around the world. How? It’s about how people work together.

“Instead of thinking of Silicon Valley as this exceptional place,” he says, “think of it as a result of the world’s biggest experiment—the opening of the American West. Take people running away from the rest of the world, strangers with diverse experience and talent, and what happens? What emerges is a body of culture and invisible rules, and a mechanism for trusting strangers.” We think of the Wild West as a lawless place, but it was the opposite, Hwang says. And the same goes for Silicon Valley. Both relied on people from vastly different backgrounds and places, driven by passion, coming together to build environments of unusual trust and mutual support.

At age 40, a product of Harvard College and the University of Chicago Law School, Hwang has spent five years as the managing director of T2 Venture Capital, where he has been involved with numerous startups. Trust in Silicon Valley “happens in a million microtransactions,” he says. “It’s sort of understood. In other places they’d think you’re a fool. An entrepreneur in the Midwest will ask you to sign a nondisclosure agreement before he’ll say what he’s doing. In the Valley he’ll blab, he’s so excited. That N.D.A. is a waste.”

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