Today, for our third lecture we watched the movie Something Ventured which tells the story of the creation of an industry that went on to become the single greatest engine of innovation and economic growth in the 20th century. It is told by the visionary risk-takers who dared to make it happen…Tom Perkins, Don Valentine, Arthur Rock, Dick Kramlich and others. The film also includes some of our finest entrepreneurs sharing how they worked with these venture capitalists to grow world-class companies like Intel, Apple, Cisco, Atari, Genentech, Tandem and others.
Beginning in the late 1950′s, this small group of high rollers fostered a one-of-a-kind business culture that encouraged extraordinary risk and made possible unprecedented rewards. They laid the groundwork for America’s start-up economy, providing not just the working capital but the guidance to allow seedling companies to reach their full potential. Our lives would be dramatically different without the contributions that these venture capitalists made to the creation of PCs, the Internet and life-saving drugs.
I have read some interesting stuff after watching the movie and especially an interview with Paul Holland, the producer. You can read it fully here on Forbes but I selected for you some excerpt :
“It’s almost nostalgic to watch Intel, Tandem, Apple, Atari and—maybe especially, Genentech– get their start. You wonder whether we’ll ever be able to recapture that same sort of entrepreneurial spirit in the U.S.
The level of activity around entrepreneurship in this country has never been higher than it is today. Hundreds upon hundreds of startups are coming out of universities, incubators, national labs and corporations. The culture that was created 50 years ago set the stage for this.
But Don Valentine recently answered your question this way…He said: “The film tells you to go West, young man. I’m going to tell you to go East, young man.” Today India and China are more conducive to starting new companies because their governments want companies to get started and be successful. Still, I don’t think there’s any better time than today to be an entrepreneur. It’s a full-fledged industry today and back then it was pretty random.
What do you hope people will take away from this film?
My high hope for this film is that every student that wants to be an entrepreneur—at every level, high school, business school, on corporate campuses—sees it. I want to see more young people fall in love with entrepreneurship… And if I have a quieter, more serious goal, it’s that I want policymakers to look at this and say ‘What can we do to make it easier, not harder, for people in this country to start those kinds of businesses?”
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