Adelson: Starting a business takes talent, real estate and the Internet

Anyone can start a wildly creative business in Baton Rouge, Jay Adelson says. All it takes is capital, talent, real estate and the Internet. “Last I checked, all that was here,” says Adelson, the founder of successful Internet startups such as Equinix, SimpleGEO, and Revision 3, who also famously launched one of the first social media, news aggregator sites—Digg. Adelson, a Detroit native who makes his home in Silicon Valley, was the keynote speaker of the Louisiana Technology & Innovation Breakfast this morning, which kicks off the Louisiana Business Symposium and will continue with Business Report‘s Top 100 Luncheon this afternoon. Adelson says too many startups today suffer from a mob mentality, thinking erroneously that they must move to Menlo Park, Calif., to be successful, and fail. Their first error is building a company from the ground up where the cost of living is insane, Adelson says. “It’s the people you’re with who will inspire you, not the location,” says Adelson. “You could build Facebook in Baton Rouge; the talent is here.” During his address, Adelson touched on what he describes as the myths of Silicon Valley. Namely, that moving there is a must if you want to get access to talent and venture capital. Also, he says, thinking too much about building a billion-dollar business is, in many ways, quixotic. “If you took a thousand entrepreneurs 20 years ago, 999 of them were innovative, successful, smaller-medium business entrepreneurs, who funded their companies with things like debt or local investment,” Adelson says. “And one of those guys might be thinking global from the beginning.” The entrepreneurs who built this country, Adelson says, started locally. —Adam Pearson