Anyone with a startup, an idea for one, or the desire to one day think up the next great app or social media platform, should stop by downtown Mountain View on Wednesday, May 2.
Alain Raynaud, founder of The Startup Conference -- a touring high-tech trade forum -- is encouraging anyone with even the slightest interest in the world of startups to come to the Center for the Performing Arts from 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on May 2.
The main event -- a daylong series of talks and open-panel discussions with entrepreneurs from around the world -- is sold out. It will be held the same day inside the Center for the Performing Arts. However, just outside the conference, Raynaud is optimistic about the "Startup Village."
"It's kind of like an art and wine festival, but for tech," he said. The village, which is free and open to all, will feature 40 tech startups from all over the country and overseas showing off their products in the "demo pit."
Raynaud, who moved from Paris to Palo Alto in the 1990s to get a piece of the first technology bubble, said the companies have come to the event from Texas, New York, Europe and Asia to gain publicity, attract capital and search for talent.
"Mountain View is one of the best cities for high tech in the whole world," he said, noting the two other cities where he has held the event -- Los Angeles and Seattle -- are also hubs of technological innovation. Mountain View is home to Google, LinkedIn, Evernote, EyeFi and Y Combinator.
"If you live here in Silicon Valley you are going to catch the bug at some point," he said.
He figures that companies exhibiting at the Startup Village, as well as the 1,000 or so who have registered for the event, are maximizing the chance of running into someone that can help them start a company. Journalists from Wired and TechCrunch have said they plan on checking out the Village.
"Everybody believes they have the next big company," he said. "My mission is to push people to get started."
Events such as this have been known to get big companies off the ground. Twitter really caught fire at the tech conference South By Southwest in Austin, Texas, Raynaud said. He acknowledged that the Startup Conference is nowhere near the size of that festival. All the same, three years ago, at the first Startup Conference in Mountain View, he met Ben Silberman, founder of the then-unknown Pinterest -- a social network site that has recently exploded in popularity.
==I The Startup Village is set for 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Wednesday, May 2, at Civic Center Plaza, 500 Castro St., Mountain View. Free. Information at the conference website.
Comments
Rex Manor
on Apr 30, 2012 at 4:32 pm
on Apr 30, 2012 at 4:32 pm
From the article: "Mountain View is one of the best cities for high tech in the whole world"
Go, Mountain View! Makes me proud to be a resident.
Registered user
Old Mountain View
on May 1, 2012 at 11:00 am
Registered user
on May 1, 2012 at 11:00 am
Side quip about a peculiar phrasing in this good story:
"Raynaud, who moved from Paris to Palo Alto in the 1990s to get a piece of the first technology bubble, ..."
Nick, when I see characterizations like that, it tells me something about the writer's memory span or local tenure.
Such phrasing is especially common among people whose awareness of silicon-valley industry began in the dot-com days. Unconscious of the earlier booms (and busts) that left us with 3600 electronics firms (in Santa Clara County alone) by 1990, and the infrastructure and culture within which a dot-coom boom could later flourish.
The perception overlooks: Original "silicon valley" boom, late 1950s to late 60s, and the US-wide technology downturn that followed (led somewhat by the aerospace industry and the national "SST" aircraft program cancellation); mid-late 1970s SV re-boom that brought massive HP expansion (seldom characterized as a "computer" firm -- that would come much later), Apple Computer, "Vallco Fashion Park," massive construction, and all those 1970s Firebird and Trans-Am cars with flames painted on them (same period I spotted the first national mention of Hoeffler's catch phrase "silicon valley," in Time magazine -- which misidentified it as being in southern CA -- but after all, NYC is so far away, geographically and otherwise); off-and-on downturn early-middle 80s (documented by Hoeffler in his hot local tech newsletter, I still have the issues); late 80s boomlet, then collapse at the time of First Gulf War; then gradually at first, in the 1990s, and with rapidly growing momentum as the Internet went fashionable, "dot-com," which halted the local recession of the early 1990s, becoming Distinct SV Boom Number Four. We are currently in #5.
Old Mountain View
on May 3, 2012 at 10:36 am
on May 3, 2012 at 10:36 am
Thank you Max for the history lesson - I didn't know we are in wave 5! This posting is included in the crowdsourced recap of the event created using storify.com, tweets, links and capturing all posted communications about the event! Tweets & Links curated by @CindyFSolomon chronological view: bit.ly/Kaq5aB Slideview: bit.ly/JTQzMc