# How to Build a Local Startup Ecosystem That Works

Author:

Peter Walker

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Read time:

2 minutes

Published date:

June 2, 2026

There won't be another Silicon Valley, but ecosystems can grow with intentional steps that go beyond the obvious infrastructure plays.

“How do we build the next Silicon Valley?” is a silly question that I get asked dozens of times per year.

There won’t be another Silicon Valley (unless somehow SF manages to shoot its own golden goose with poor governance - and even then, it would take decades).

BUT there are some steps that anyone interested in building their local startup ecosystems can take and they may not be as obvious as you expect:

1) Be happy when a local company gets a Series B from an SF fund.

Whoa, shouldn’t we be annoyed? We need these local champions to take local capital and stay local, right? Nope.

There aren’t really many places to raise a serious Series B/C/D these days. How many funds in Dallas could lead a $100M Series C? And that’s not to pick on Dallas - I’ve had this conversation with fund managers from Seattle to Sydney. Letting the winners go is the right call.

2) Deepen strengths rather than shoring up weaknesses

A startup ecosystem will naturally coalesce around an area’s core competency. Biotech in San Diego, Logistics in Bentonville, Government/Defense in D.C. Don’t fight that pull, lean into it. And then the area attracts nearby talent you can expand naturally.

3) Convince local rich people to be angels

This is one of the core advantages in SV. Everyone made their money in tech, so investing into young startups is sort of the expectation rather than some wild risk. Not so in communities where the capital came from other industries. Fund managers who evangelize locally to prospective angels are doing the real work.

Don’t build the next Silicon Valley. Build the first thriving startup ecosystem in hundreds of cities across the US (or indeed the world).

Just some musing while I'm out on sabbatical. Will only be posting sporadically, apologies in advance for the lack of daily data!

Author: [Peter Walker](/content/author/peter-walker/index.html)

Peter Walker runs the Insights team at Carta, focused on discovering key data and narratives across the private capital ecosystem. In a former life, he was a marketing executive for a media analytics startup and led the data visualization team at the Covid Tracking Project.