A while back a posting from the Singapore Business Times entitled “Start-ups risk ‘going astray’ in two scenarios” came into my Facebook stream. I commented with the following:

Governments are rarely good at leading investment in these spaces. If you look at the story behind Silicon Valley, it’s pure luck. A bunch of brilliant people got stranded in the south bay and then went on to build lots of iconic companies from a single very profitable company. These people also paid it forward to the next round of start ups that they felt would be successful.

The reply that I got suggested that Silicon Valley wasn’t luck and it wasn’t lead by government. The reply implored me to review the Wikipedia page stating it was very good. So I did just that and here is that analysis in addition to some insight from a report on How Silicon Valley became Silicon Valley.

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