Silicon Valley Shaped by Technology and Traffic

In today’s New York Times, the newspaper reports in “Silicon Valley Shaped by Technology and Traffic” how there are micro-industry niches based on technology, traffic patterns / location (SF vs. Silicon Valley), and several other factors, including ethnic ties:

“Mr. Chaddha also represents another social cluster in the Valley, the ethnic Indian community. When he and Mr. Gupta needed advice, he said, “we went back to our roots,” tapping leaders of the Indus Entrepreneurs, a powerful ethnic Indian networking group. Today, Mr. Chaddha is a senior member of the organization. New companies with deep ethnic links — mainly Indian and Chinese — are sprouting up in the Valley. Often, ethnic background is but one layer of social relationship. SnapTell, a start-up that seeks to marry image-recognition technology, cellphones and marketing, was founded last year by G. D. Ramkumar and Gautam Bhargava, Indian computer scientists and Valley veterans. The company has 10 employees, six of whom have Ph.D.’s and three of whom are from Stanford. The shared backgrounds, interests and schools make for frictionless communication that fosters rapid innovation.”

If you work in the San Francisco Bay Area and in technology and Internet industry, I am sure you will agree with a lot of the observations detailed in the article. I’ve attended numerous Chinese Software Professionals Association (CSPA) , Asia America MultiTechnology Association, ORIENTED.COM, events, as well as Stanford BASES (Business Association of Stanford Entrepreneurial Students) promoted events, as well as events in my www.digitalmbas.org listed events.