Steve Blank on Silicon Valley vs Istanbul

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Startup Istanbul Conference we caught up with him for an interview. He had great insights into how Turkey's entrepreneurial ecosystem is shaping up. Here's how he answered the question on how Istanbul compares to Silicon Valley.

Can you compare Silicon Valley & Istanbul?

I think Istanbul and Turkey have world-class engineers, smart entrepreneurs, sophisticated entrepreneurs investors that are getting smarter and starting to give some pretty good advice. I think it's only a matter of time before we're buying our products from Turkey. I think entrepreneurs in Turkey are faced with a as well as their investors faced with a kind of a basic question. Do you want to focus on the 20 million people in Istanbul? You want to focus on the 76 million people in Turkey? You want to focus on the region? You want to focus on the EU or you want to be global? Each one of those answers kind of describes how much money you could raise because of how much you could return, what type of team you could build and how big your vision is. I happen to believe that if you're born local you're going to die  local if you're born global you will have a shot at being a global company but that's a conscious choice that entrepreneurs ought to be asking themselves all the time where do I want to end up how big do I want to be and how much capital would I need  to raise to go do that and is it possible to do in Turkey or do I need to go to Silicon Valley or London or Berlin to do that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PT9x3TCNIqM]]>