It is hard. You invest your time and heart into getting those young ones ready for the world. You want to encourage them, protect them, give them as much opportunity as possible. All we want is for them to succeed and contribute to the community. One of the hardest parts of rearing them is that at some point you have to stand back and let them become adults. I’m talking about the Arizona technology startup community. It is time to grow up.
Taking a look back at what has happened over the past ten years or so you can see people from government, non-profits, academia and industry come together to create what is truly a community. Startups no longer need to develop in isolation. We have incubators, classes, mentors, angels and programs to help them figure out what they want to do and do it. There are groups and networking events where people get to know each other. And there is money for good ideas, in the form of grants and seed investments. Yet we don’t see the rapid success that so much momentum should bring.
That’s because our community is still in building and nurturing mode. We focus on getting ready for success instead of achieving success. And we support far too many startups that are just not going to make it. As a community we need to realize it’s time to be more mature and take steps…