Being part of the so-called Sand Hill crowd, you can sometimes forget that the rest of the country not to mention the world may not be in on the reference. I was once asked to address the leaders of the National Association of Broadcasters at Pebble Beach in Carmel Valley a mere hundred miles from Silicon Valley. Trouble was, nobody knew what I was talking about. I spent the first ten minutes of my one-hour talk explaining the concept to them, which was a new experience for me. I had been living in the bubble so long that it hadn't occurred to me that people outside it might not know what I was talking about.
Silicon Valley is a place for people with ideas.
It is a place where the right idea at the right time can yield remarkable returns for investors and entrepreneurs. It is known, rightly, as a place of simmering, sometimes spouting, creative enterprise. How ironic, then, that the venture capitalists who nurture this creativity aren't more creative in their choices of where to meet, eat, and mingle. The best example of this is the phenomenon of the Silicon Valley breakfast. Breakfast is a prime time here for discussing potential deals.