The other day, someone told me that Silicon Valley was built on the failures endured by countless entrepreneurs. Failure in the Valley is nothing to be ashamed of, and, in many ways, is considered a badge of honor. It signifies that you had the guts, passion and desire to go for it. You took the risk and stared uncertainty down. This is how progress is made, how great companies are built and how ideas spread.
Best Microsoft MCTS Training, Microsoft MCITP Training at certkingdom.com
I arrived here three months ago from Athens, Greece, under an exploratory initiative by the Ministry of Education who, with the leadership of local Greek Valley VCs and entrepreneurs, had chosen my company as one of four to take residence at the Plug and Play Tech Center in Silicon Valley. We were to be part of an accelerator program that would introduce us to the Valley ecosystem. The goal for the government was to learn why and how the Valley community is so good at building businesses that change the world.
And so I find myself, for the first time in ten years, living outside of Athens, witnessing the collapse of Greece play out on CNN. I watched as angry crowds amassed in front of the Parliament, organized through Facebook pages and tweets.
It’s a surreal experience to see a country you know so well unravel from so far away. We all saw this coming, and if any Greek citizen says otherwise, he is lying. Greece was the ultimate bubble, and most of society was content with that — the promise of stress-free living was impossible to pass up. Over the years, I witnessed the powers-that-be strip away all mechanisms of entrepreneurship, risk and innovation in favor of the alternatives: a bloated public sector and a guaranteed employment structure. The government (on both the left and right side of the political aisle) ensured that everyone was well-fed, regardless of competency and effectiveness, but always with the precondition that those who ruled were first to the dinner table.
And so we all played along because life was predictable and comfortable. Our homes, our jobs and our relationships were all neatly laid out for us. The government and the parea (Greek for “group of friends”) would take care of everything as long as we fell in line. We failed to realize that by removing risk, we gutted opportunity, and fell victim to our own complacencies. We are now up to our ears in debt with no means to negotiate our way out.
Now Europe, and arguably the world, seeks change in Greece. The coffers that kept us propped up for so many years are empty, and in their place is a heavy burden that must be paid back. The alternative — to simply walk away — is a road better left untraveled.
Once upon a time, Greece was the Silicon Valley of the world, full of brilliant people taking artistic, philosophical and mathematical risks. Challenging the status quo and upending common beliefs was what made the ancient Greeks so great.
So as this tragedy unfolds, I am left feeling that somehow, some way, we need to channel the free thinkers and risk takers of the Bay Area in order to build lasting and sustainable change back home. The Valley ecosystem understands that it’s hard enough developing product, defining market position and getting customers, and that red tape (an integral part of Greek society) only reduces the already low chances of success. The Valley can provide us with a plethora of structural examples that would move the business environment in Greece from hostile to friendly. But external guidelines need to be accompanied by internal change.
As a society we need to look within and change our mentality, or face dire consequences. And for this too, the Valley can serve as an example that believing in a dream and embracing its risks will help reinvent our community and country.
If I can take away one thing from my experience here and ingrain it into Greek society, it would be to move toward uncertainty, embrace the challenges ahead and find the joy in solving the problems of the present day. We need to drop the cynicism, forget the past indiscretions of our leaders (we are all guilty to some degree or another) and band together, roll up our sleeves and get to work.
The web is a force of nature unlike anything we have ever seen, and we need to recognize that tapping into this force requires trial and error. It is part of the game, and entrepreneurs play the game well.
For the last decade, Greece has been hindering entrepreneurship. Now it’s time to reverse course, embrace risk and welcome the entrepreneur back with open arms. Entrepreneurship is alive and well here in Silicon Valley, and while the semantics to overcome the debt in Greece are complicated, the spirit of the Valley entrepreneur is in the palm of our hands, splashed across the profile pages we use daily.
