There’s this three-year itch about the idea of having our own version of the Silicon Valley in the Philippines. Migs started the discussion just over 2 years ago and has been revived by Marie of Pinoy Web StartUp.
This reminds me of my discussions with the guys who ran Pinoy Web 2.0 about a couple of years ago and the ensuing discussions on whether ad-driven local Web 2.0 sites will actually work.
The idea of having a Silicon Valley in the Philippines may have been dreamt way longer than that I think. I even thought that in the early 2000’s, we had it going — Andersen Consulting became Accenture and grew rapidly (with most of the consultants are based in the Philippines), Canon Philippines has tons of hard-core Filipino hardware programmers (still is until now), Trend Micro and its pool of geeky Filipino anti-virus engineers and Intel Philippines doing research on flash technology locally.
Instead, the Philippine Government focused on a related but more lucrative, higher job hiring industry — the call centers. And true enough, Bangalore aside, Makati City can be called the BPO Silicon Valley of the Philippines.
But why did we really lost track of the more nerdy industry? Intel moving its plant to China and selling its Flash Plant, Accenture employees being constantly hawked by its foreign clients, and top Filipino SAP and .NET developers flying off to Singapore in droves. Oh yes, we’ve practically exhausted most of the real-world reasons in our discussion over Google going for a Malaysian Data Center and totally ignoring the Philippines on their list.
On the other hand, the other end of the spectrum for a Silicon Valley mindset is an independent entrepreneurial inspiration. These are the people who have great ideas needing VC support. If there’s a minuscule chance we can revive that enthusiasm among Filipinos then that’s the ticket.
- Get the right people who have the bright ideas and the necessary skills and match them with a VC or an Angel.
- Change people’s mind-set on the existing business models — the Advertising Model is already diluted and the local market is still small to even accommodate more players (not to mention Friendster and Multiply inventories alone can eat up all CPM budgets).
- Avoid the usual pitfalls — leveraging your business model from someone else’s business. Sometimes it’s ok, especially if you can grab a multi-year lock-in deal. This is what happened to over half of the content providers (CPs) during the upstart of the SMS boom. Now, most of them have closed shop (after exclusive contracts have expired) or the telcos themselves got too greedy and bought out the players.
- Get them started at school. The younger crowd are more ambitious, have fresh skills and are not that too excited to join the corporate world. The idea of a start-up is more enticing to them.
- Avoid the “me-too” mentality. Not all hip and hot stuff that the real Silicon Valley spits out will be as hot in our own climate. Let’s play on our own strengths and creativity but bear in mind the culture-factor. Ideas need not be “eureka moments”, oftentimes these are simple ideas that meet an undiscovered market demands.
Need to get my ass back and revive that “What happened to …” series of mine.
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I have 4 very talented friends who are programmers. All of them were given very good offers in places like Canada, Europe and Singapore.
I can’t blame them though. Earning a sure 4000+ USD for them is much better then literally betting on the “house and farm” on a Start-up venture that might fail and melt away their time and money investment with it.
Also Silicon Valley have ADVENTUROUS venture capitalist who are willing to bet millions/billions on startups. I don’t think the Rich in the Philippines would be so daring as they would rather put their money in more traditional businesses.
Filipino It lack the necessary skills and funding to launch those startup. there also don’t have enough courage to launch a startup. There are garage innovators across this country some of them working lone wolf, some are collaborating, working like wolf pack. But they can’t do it because this country is still in young when it comes to launching an startup, people are too afraid to take a risk. No one take a moonshot project of their own. The real factor here is the Funding, tools and the passions to take a moonshot. Philippines don’t have VC who scout the country for future Facebook or youtube. Maybe someday who knows?
A foreigner’s view:
I think the Philippines have most of the necessary ingridients, but these ones get me:
* horrible infrastructure. Yes, I know that there are places with their own generators, that will survive a nuclear attack; but having routine brownouts and electrical spikes that can bust a toaster is, as you understand, very discouraging.
* developers are frequently treated as “computer guys” who do everything from administration of the local network to system programming. For serious development one needs specialists who spend 100% of their time programming or administrating, not jacks of all trades.
* Some of the software infrastructure, which doesn’t really require a lot of investment, simply doesn’t work. How difficult is it to make sure that emails on a website work? If after 3 attempts all of the emails to a huge telco’s return with “account doesn’t exist” errors, what kind of impression does it make about the company? And why everybody insists on using Yahoo and GMail as their work emails?
However, on the positive side:
* people are extremely accommodating, and willing to learn
* the senior execs are more approachable than in other countries
* the skill level is reasonably high
* people are willing to tinker with things, when it’s not in the books. They don’t have it in India nor in China, and this is IMHO what has primarily built Israeli hi-tech.
It’s still cheaper to outsource to Russian or Vietnamese programmers. I have prototype being built for $2,500. I tried shopping around for freelancers in Pinas but the average cost is $1,300 and that only for the template. LOL
@Miguel: Morph Code is entirely separate operation (although related in ecosystem) to Morph Labs. Let’s just say it’s Winston’s playground.
Have you heard of the UP-Ayala Science and Technology Park? I hope this will start the change of focus we are waiting for.
We need success stories. Are there any from the Brain Gain Network, for example? Whatever happened to the UP-Ateneo ‘Silicon Alley’ (aka Ayala-funded incubator)?
The company is still pretty new, so I don’t know if they have customers or partners.
@Miguel: Thanks for sharing that… Did it work for someone, I hope theres a project currently benefiting from them.