Startup Communities, Second Edition: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City
Brad Feld
John Wiley & Sons (2020)

“Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re probably right.”  Henry Ford

I read this second edition of a pioneering work that was first published in 2012 before reading The Startup Community Way, co-authored with Ian Hathaway and published on the same day. They are complementary works, best read (in my opinion) in combination, this book first.

The need for a revised and updated edition of Startup Communites is obvious, indeed overdue, given all that has happened — and is happening now — in a business world that is more volatile, more uncertain, more complex, and more ambiguous than at any prior time that I can remember in a career that began in 1960. Change remains the only constant but it occurs so much faster and in much greater frequency. I agree with Richard Dawkins: “Yesterday’s dangerous idea is today’s orthodoxy and tomorrow’s cliché.”

Here’s the etymology of the word entrepreneur : “one who undertakes or manages,” agent noun from Old French entreprendre “undertake” (see enterprise). The word first crossed the Channel late 15c. (Middle English entreprenour) but did not stay. Meaning “business manager” is from 1852.

Those who launch startups are entrepreneurs. Those who create startup communities are also entrepreneurs. However, startups are not limited to new companies. They could also be engaged with anything else that is not associated with the given status quo.  The most important U.S. entrepreneurs have led initiatives that resulted in breakthrough innovations. Examples include Benjamin Franklin, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison, Sam Walton, Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs.

These are among the passages of greatest interest and value to me:

o Boulder Startup Community (Pages 2-3 and 5-20)
o Denver Startup Community (19-20, 62-63, and 84-85)
o Participants in startup communities (31-47)
o Leadership attributes (49-59)
o The Patriarch Problem (61-63)

o Classical problems (61-65)
o Activities and events (77-105)
o Boulder Denver New Tech Startup (82-83 and 119-124))
o Brad Bernthal/CU New Venture Challenge (100-102, 120-125, and 138-141)
o Accelerations (107-118)

o University Accelerators (115-118
o Silicon Flatirons’ Networked Approach (120-123)
o The Real Value — Fresh Blood into the System (129-136)
o The Power of Alumni (141-142)
o How Large Corporations Can Help (149-159)

o The Power of the Community (161-170)
o Weaknesses in startup communities (171-180)
o Rural startup communities (181-183)
o Myths about Startup Communities (191-198)
o Startup America Partnership (204-208)

Thousands of years ago, families began to create groups that, in turn, became communities and then tribes that, in turn, became nations. This is a complicated process, one involving discovery, growth, decline, and sometimes extinction as well as varying degrees of communication, cooperation, and (especially) collaboration. Long before

Since the first entrepreneurs, startups have had three primary needs: survival, security, and over time, sustainability.  In this Second Edition of what has become a business “classic,” Brad Feld’s focus is on one of the most challenging human initiatives: creating an ecosystem within which launching a new business its success is most likely to occur.  That is, an ecosystem that can help a startup fill its three basic needs. This edition includes what he has learned since 2012 from startup communities with which he has been closely associated. However, the four basic frameworks remain the same and each is thoroughly discussed in this book and in The Startup Community Way, co-authored with Ian Hathaway.

Henry Ford makes a key point in the quotation provided earlier. Launching a startup is not for the timid. Most people are unwilling put at risk what James O’Toole so aptly characterizes as “the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom.” Entrepreneurs have fears and concerns but, despite them,  also the courage to pursue a dream and maintain their commitment. There are many valuable lessons to be learned from a community of those who launch startups. They are worthy of our thoughtful consideration.

I also want to add another key point: Much (not all) of the material in the two books can be of substantial benefit — with only minor modification — to those launching a new business venture within a large, well-established organization. In fact, whatever their size and nature may be, ALL organizations need to establish a workplace culture that is in every possible and appropriate way an entrepreneurial ecosystem.