Former Apple guru cuts to core of a problem

We’re sorry, this feature is currently unavailable. We’re working to restore it. Please try again later.

Advertisement

This was published 11 years ago

Former Apple guru cuts to core of a problem

Creating a Silicon Valley equivalent is not simply a question of cash.

By Lucy Battersby

If Australia is serious about starting its own Silicon Valley, it should relocate the nation's university engineering departments into one city.

Because it was the sparks of ingenuity and crazy stunts that come naturally from lots of students working and living together that created the famous region near San Jose, says the venture capitalist and former Apple ''evangelist'' Guy Kawasaki.

On the bubble... Guy Kawasaki.

On the bubble... Guy Kawasaki.Credit: Tamara Dean

''If you look at Silicon Valley, the core is not venture capital, or legal or public relations or marketing or finance or anything like that,'' he says. ''The core is computer science and engineering departments of Stanford [University] and [University of California] Berkeley.

''So if you want to start at the core essential factor it is engineers, and engineers come out of engineering school. What happens is, engineering students create products and the products require funding, and once you get funding then all the infrastructure happens.''

Governments have tried to recreate Silicon Valley through funding, but this does not work because innovation does not come from money, Kawasaki says. ''Innovation starts with engineers.''

In a little more than 40 years Silicon Valley has grown from a university town to the home of the world's largest company - Apple - and many of the biggest technology firms, including Adobe, Cisco, eBay, Google, Facebook, Sun Microsystems and YouTube. Australia has a national broadband network under construction that is the envy of nerds around the world, including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, who has also been in Australia helping Telstra launch the new Apple iPhone.

For Kawasaki this visit to Sydney is his first to Australia, courtesy of Vodafone Hutchison Australia, which brought him out to help judge its ''48-hour App Aid Hackathon competition''. Ten teams of seven people, a mix of charity representatives and developers, were given two days to develop new apps from scratch for charities. The winner was an app that helps St John Ambulance volunteers in emergencies, but all entries were ''Silicon Valley-class'', Kawasaki says.

He now runs a venture capital firm called Garage Technology Ventures, which provides early-stage funding for new technology companies.

Kawasaki says there is still plenty of opportunity for inventors amid the ''patent wars'', which involve nearly all major tech company suing competitors. Motorola is in court against Apple, claiming its voice-recognition application Siri breaches Motorola's patents, according to TechCrunch. Google recently purchased Motorola for $US12.5 billion ($12 billion) and there was speculation Google was going after Motorola's portfolio of 17,000 patents as much as its mobile manufacturing capabilities. And Samsung was ordered to pay Apple $US1 billion in damages for violating patents on smartphones and tablets.

Advertisement

''I have never seen anybody patent their way to success,'' Kawasaki says. ''I don't think [the patent system] is damaging innovation, nor is it helping innovation. Frankly, if you are a small company starting out, you would file a patent and it costs about $US1000. It takes about five years and $US15,000 to actually get the patent. And in the meantime - five years is a long time - either the company has died, which is most likely, or it has succeeded beyond its wildest dreams.''

It is more important to get critical mass than amass patents because this is what helps companies such as Facebook and Twitter defend their patents, he says. ''Even if you have got [patents], if a large company like Microsoft or Apple or Google or Oracle stepped on your patent … so now you are two guys in a garage with maybe a million dollars and you are going to go out-litigate any of those companies? Even if you are right, I don't think it is going to work!''

Given Silicon Valley was the heart of the dotcom bubble just more than a decade ago, is it going to be the scene of the next bubble? Social media companies are hottest, but Facebook's rapid drop in share price since listing on NASDAQ has chilled any social media bubble, Kawasaki says.

Facebook reached $US38 soon after listing, but is trading at just above $US20.

''Don't get me wrong, everyone wants a bubble. The key is to get out before the bubble pops. I think that is the lesson we learnt from the last time … [But] I don't think [it is bursting], not yet. There are still companies that are raising $10 million or $15 million [with] a $30 million to $50 million post-money valuation that are absolutely unproven, so I don't think the bubble has burst yet.''

The rush for Apple's latest smartphone and ongoing devotion among users shows that Kawasaki's title of ''chief evangelist''is on target. But he does not think people have a religious devotion to certain brands. ''It is probably in human DNA that they fall in love with stuff and I don't know how you can avoid it. Not everybody falls in love with everything.''

He still uses Apple's laptop computers, but is ''strictly'' Android for a smartphone and tablet, a Samsung Galaxy III and Nexus 7.

Most Viewed in Business

Loading