Why the Internet will be the next (and last) Silicon Valley

Headlines will have you believe the Silicon Valley of tomorrow is blossoming in the Midwest, Los Angeles or even Medellin, Colombia. It is exciting to speculate where the next tech center of the world could be, however, as companies rely more on distributed teams, the next Silicon Valley might be less tangible than we think.

According to a Twitter conversation between Andreas Klinger, Head of Remote at Angle List and recent speaker at Running Remote, and Angle List co-founder Naval Ravikant, the Internet will be the next (and last) Silicon Valley.

Remote work is becoming increasingly common for many businesses, and internal business communications must correlate with this grow. Therefore, it will come as no surprise that we’re seeing a surge in startups being built on platforms like Slack.

However, internal business communications still seems to be this elusive concept that is different for every business. For some, it’s a simple matter of “what can I use to communicate with my staff?”, and others it’s a more complicated question of “what can I use to reduce workload?”

So how can a company effectively utilize internal business communications in their own way? According to Nick Kyriakides, Co-founder and COO of netTALK Business, a VoIP Phone Service which features Free Worldwide In-Network Calls, “Specific to internal comms, a business is only as good as its team, and that team can only be effective when they communicate well with each other. I feel like business operations are not only built upon processes but also a series of rapid micro-decisions.”

He adds: “They key is “rapid”….you can’t always make decisions in a vacuum and oftentimes, you need to consult with experts on your team quickly. Customers move fast so your business and team need to work faster behind the scenes to support their needs. Effective internal comms is key.

The reality is that internal business communications has the potential to fix far too many business issues for its value to be trivialized, and the challenges surrounding it must be treated as a sickness: diagnose your issues, choose the right tools to address them, then weave them into not only your computer systems, but also your company culture.

If this is implemented correctly, a business can be a part of the next big technological paradigm shift, allowing it to be a fully-fledged citizen of tomorrow’s Silicon Valley.

Disclosure: This article includes a client of an Espacio portfolio company