Studs of Silicon Valley
Saturday, May 3rd, 2008Something I noticed while out at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco:
There are a lot of smart, accomplished engineers, executives, and entrepreneurs out there.
But in order to really get superstar-credit as a young entrepreneur, I think there is a clear bar:
Start at least 2 companies with exits of at $1 billion. Doing more than one shows that it wasn’t a fluke.
There’s just a handful of entrepreneurs on that list. Marc Andreessen
(Netscape, Loudcloud) is getting a lot of credit these days for Ning. Max Levchin (Paypal, Yelp, Slide) also is getting a lot of press. He’ll probably hit the bar. Obviously, Steve Jobs, amongst the older generation, and all the other A-list names that you already know.
Larry and Sergey are undeniably brilliant, but who knows if they had to start from scratch, and if they hadn’t stumbled upon the biggest technology gold mine invented in the last 10 years? I guess reaching a $100+ billion valuation qualifies you for the superstar list, even if you’ve only done one.