Screw the Valley: Las Vegas Edition. Timothy Sprinkle

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      Contents

       Introduction

       Excerpt from Screw the Valley

       Additional Resources

Introduction

      LAS VEGAS is complicated.

      It’s bright, it’s loud, and it’s crowded. On one hand, you have millions of visitors descending on the city every year from around the world, drawn by the gambling, the shows, the restaurants, and the sheer spectacle of the place. On the other hand, it’s also one of the busiest convention and business destinations on the planet, hosting dozens of major trade shows and events every year, drawing even more visitors to the area’s 100,000-plus hotel rooms.

      But in addition to all of the glitter and lights that make up modern Las Vegas, the region also houses some two million people full-time, and fosters an increasingly diverse economy that includes everything from construction companies to high tech to, of course, tourism. It may be the kind of place that most people only get to see and experience while on vacation, but it is also a metropolitan area like any other, with a growing population, a developing commercial base, and all of the challenges that come along with that.

      In short: It’s one of the most unique cities in the United States.

      But for technology entrepreneurs, Las Vegas is also something of a surprising place.

      Not only is there tech in the Las Vegas Valley—Zappos.com is headquartered there, for one thing, and the city’s casinos employ an impressive back office army of lighting, automation, and other high tech support professionals—but there is a bonafide startup ecosystem at work in the region. Sure, this isn’t Silicon Valley, and the Vegas tech community is still in the growth stages, but it is as tight-knit and active a group as you’ll find anywhere in the country. In addition to regular networking and education events in the area, there is also a smattering of coworking and incubator spaces, as well as a growing group of seed-stage and larger tech companies at work.

      In addition, the city is the focus of one of the most intriguing startup efforts in recent memory, the Downtown Project. The brainchild of Zappos.com CEO and LinkExchange co-founder, Tony Hsieh, the project began in 2011 as a $350-million gamble on the future of downtown Las Vegas, where Zappos.com’s headquarters are now located in the former City Hall building.

      The Downtown Project’s stated goal is “to help make downtown Vegas a place of inspiration, entrepreneurial energy, creativity, innovation, upward mobility, and discovery through the three Cs of collisions, co-learning, and connectedness in a long-term, sustainable way.” It has been doing all of that and more by funding entrepreneurs, buying up and renovating downtown real estate, attracting new restaurant and retail tenants to the area, bankrolling a 24/7 security force to keep the streets safe, and just generally taking on the entire neighborhood as a quality-of-life project.

      That’s not to say there haven’t been some bumps along the way. In fall 2014, the Downtown Project announced a reorganization that resulted in some layoffs of corporate staff and a refocus of its investment philosophy (fewer pie-in-the-sky ideas, more sustainable businesses), but the organization continues on in 2015, still working on a variety of efforts focused on the downtown core of the city to this day.