A friend of mine and I, had this elaborate discussion on some of the advantages of actually being in the valley. Well, Thomas Fieldman is proving himself to be right with the globe turning more and more flat as the years pass by and I am quite positively sure that position holds not that much of a relevance and trumph card anymore.

As it is, I understand that most startup projects that are happening in the valley are being outsourced to companies here in India to be developed. The reason being cost and the availability of talent.

The fact that the dollar is dropping, added to the fact that the ruppee is appreciated is really not helping the case. In most cases, apart from the added headache of managing your team remotely, your cost also ends up being the same. What is even more empathetic is that most of these silicon valley companies end up handing their product developments to companies that probably aren’t the best of the breed when it comes to development – the biggest issue when it comes to outsourcing.

I am all for outsourcing service-related work. Management of networks, servers and mindless crunching of data and numbers seems to be a valid point, but would a startup want to outsource its most crucial asset – the product itself? Hmm… I am not sure if thats the right way to go.

So, what does a startup need anyways?

Access to the market, capital, human resources and the depth in a market to build a product that actually makes sense. An entrepreneur from the valley will always have his roots there, and does have the liberty to fly to and forth, along with taking advantage of the evolving business models of the east.

Being a global entrepreneur, might be the trend of the future to match up with the world becoming flat.

I question, Why don’t most of these silicon valley entrepreneurs move to India anyways? It might not be the way to go as the business scales up, but for being on bootstrapping mode and to get a product and team together, I strongly believe that India is the way to go. If you are the next Mark Zuckerburg trying to build the next big thing, India is very much the place to be.

An elaborate post on this, is soon to follow.

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