For innovation hubs, Google for Entrepreneurs is like a pipeline to Silicon Valley ? or beyond.
Google launched the program last September and announced seven partner hubs in North America.
Communitech is the only Canadian hub. Google recently added Nashville to the network.
Under the Google for Entrepreneurs banner, startup communities in each city take part in a variety of events, such as BlackBox Connect and Demo Day.
John Lyman, Head of Partnerships for the Google for Entrepreneurs team, leads the program. We had a chance to catch up with him June 5 when he visited the Communitech Hub and Waterloo Region.
Q – Why did Google set out to build a network of tech hubs in North America?
A – We had done a few partnerships with individual hubs in a few cities and when we talked to them, they said that there might be value in a network of hubs. We thought the same thing.
We launched the network in September of 2013 and we had a couple of ideas of where it would go. We didn’t want it to be a network in name only, so we asked the hubs themselves, “OK, what do you think would add the most value?” And they said, “Better access to Silicon Valley for our startups to raise money.”
So we did a demo day in March. The hubs all came out and each of them brought some of their companies. We had a Google Ventures judge. We had Steve Case as a judge, who invested $100,000 into each company at the end of the event, which was a huge surprise to us. A pleasant surprise.
We launched, just last month, a Google for Entrepreneurs Passport, meaning if you work at Communitech, you can work for free in Austin at our partner hub there; or Chicago at 1871, which is a partner hub. And we also include Google’s Campuses in that.
Google runs two of our own spaces for entrepreneurs called campuses, one in London and one in Tel Aviv. They’re like Communitech, but owned and operated by Google. We just announced a third one (June 4) in Poland, but it won’t be open for six months. So anyone who is a member of those hubs can work at a partner hub.
Our goals with the network are to help startups grow, to help them understand Google better, and to have a touch point with great startups. And one way that we have found our way go great startups is to work with partners who are working with really high-quality startups, like Communitech.
Q – How did you choose the eight North American hub locations?
A – There are a few things that we look for. Startup density is one. You need a mass of startups that are functioning, getting investment and growing.
If we have a Google office nearby, particularly one that is technical, things also tend to work well, although not every tech hub partnership is done in a city where we have an office. But it’s nice because you can have engineers come in and mentor. You can have startups learn about Google.
Also, we look for a great partner, someone who has actually pulled together the startup community really well. And many cities have that now, but some of them don’t.
There are actually some fragmented communities out there right now, where maybe there are four or five hubs and accelerators, and there is not one central gathering place.
If you come to Waterloo, or you go to Chicago, it’s immediately obvious that there is one hub that is doing incredibly well, and those are the types of folks that we wanted to partner with.
We also wanted to have some geographic diversity and different spots on the map, so that hubs could be a real network and people could learn from different areas.
We liked Nashville, for example, because (it has) a real strength in health care. We think it’s interesting when there are certain hubs that have strong suits in one industry or another.
Q – How do you see the hub network evolving?
A – Well, one, we would love for there to be even more interactions among the hubs themselves, and this is starting to happen.
So, if you’re in Raleigh-Durham and you’re an entrepreneur and you want to go to Chicago, what does that mean, and how does that even happen? Are there things you can learn in Chicago and that you can’t in Durham?
I spoke a little earlier about the strengths of the different hubs. The demo-day concept worked pretty well in the Bay Area when we brought all the startups from the eight hubs. What if we could have “vertical” demo days in the hubs themselves, in a particular strong suit? What if in Nashville we could have a health-care-focused demo day and try to draw investors there, instead of bringing the startups out to California?
These are all just thoughts right now, and we don’t have any firm plans, but those are some of the things that we are thinking about.
Q – How do you hope the host communities will benefit from having a G4E hub?
A – We hope that they understand that there are other communities out there that are similar in some ways, and different in other ways, and that they can learn from each other.
If they want links into Google, and if they want links into Silicon Valley, we can help provide that. Each of these cities has a lot going on, on their own, but it is also sometimes nice to have connections, whether it’s with an investor, or whether it is just someone at Google in Mountain View who can look at your app and say, “X, Y and Z are going well, but here are a few things that you can change.” Those connections are really important.
Now a lot of that happens informally, and that’s a great way for it to happen. But it’s also sometimes nice to put a more formal package around it. For example, now everyone at Google recognizes that Communitech has been selected as a hub that Google really likes to work with. So if the Google Glass team says, “I want to talk to developers in eight cities across the U.S. and Canada,” I can raise my hand and say, “I have an idea. Here are hubs that we have picked and vetted, and we know that there are great developers there; why don’t you go talk to them?”
We think that adds value to the Glass team, but obviously also for the entrepreneurs in these cities.
Q – What has surprised you most during your visit to Waterloo Region?
A – I think there are some strengths that have immediately stood out.
One is the University of Waterloo and the relationship that it has with the startup community, how integrated it is; this co-op approach that they have where people who are technical are also going out very early in their university careers, and working in companies.
I think that’s pretty unique and extremely valuable, because it’s one thing to be proficient technically; it’s another to be practical and understand what companies are really looking for. And that’s obviously really important if you’re going to go work for a company, but it is even more important if you want to go start one. So that mindset is really critical.
I wouldn’t say that this is a surprise, but just meeting with the different companies that I met with today, like Desire2Learn. We really believe — and this is the case when I meet with people here too — that innovation can happen anywhere now. And it is easier and cheaper to start a company and hire up in a place outside of Silicon Valley, Boston or Toronto than it has been in the past, and that’s a real change in the global economy. I don’t think that will go away any time soon.
I shouldn’t say that you can build a company anywhere. You can’t go to Antarctica and start a company; but there are more of these regional hubs now that can produce big companies with real technology and nice exits than there were 10 or 15 years ago.
Q – Why do you think that is?
A – A few reasons.
We saw a lot of this start to happen around 2009-2010, which is interesting. I think a lot of it has to do with the recession, because as people got thrown out of work, or their companies collapsed, they just naturally went off and started their own companies.
Computing costs have just gotten a lot cheaper. You can now start a company for hundreds of thousands of dollars instead of tens of millions of dollars. That means that you can iterate a lot quicker, so you can try something for six months or twelve months, and if it’s not working you can move into something else. And ubiquitous high-speed broadband. You can launch your company to the world now much more easily.
And just the spread of entrepreneurship as an idea is a lot more prevalent now than I think it was 10 or 15 years ago. I was just talking to Ali [Asaria] from Tulip Retail. He feels like permission has been granted to innovate – which is funny if you think about it, because you should never have to get permission to innovate – but it’s true to some extent.
Society has now said, in places like Waterloo, Chicago and Austin, this is just something that you can do now. If you graduate from a university, instead of going to work for a huge corporation, you can actually try to do something on your own first and people don’t think you’re slacking off or can’t get a real job.
That has been the case in Silicon Valley for 30 or 40 years, and has been the case in other places for a while too; but now it’s more of a general cultural mind shift.
I also think that in society, we have started to elevate the entrepreneur as someone to aspire to, and that happened a little bit of a decade ago.
But it happens a lot more now.
