20-Year Prospect

20-Year Prospect

Will there be entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley twenty years from now? Sure (unless the next Big One sinks all those startups into San Francisco Bay).

Will you be an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley twenty years from now? That question's harder to answer, mostly because around ninety percent of Silicon Valley startups sputter and die without ever making their founders a fortune.

Also, there's always the chance you'll build your startup somewhere other than sunny California. Portland, Oregon; Austin, Texas; Omaha, Nebraska; Des Moines, Iowa – tech companies are springing up all over the country, in places where the cost of living is relatively low and there are interesting local resources to draw on.

But, the truth is, so long as the Bay Area sucks in billions of dollars in investment capital every year – Silicon Valley picked up about $7 billion in the second quarter of 2014 alone – tech billionaire wannabes will be there, scrambling to produce the next big idea, product, or service.