With Google Fiber, This Isn’t Your Father’s Startup Incubator

Entrepreneurs starting technology businesses in their garages is the stuff of Silicon Valley folk lore. But will home-based entrepreneurialism propelled by Google Fiber be the lure for a new generation of entrepreneurs flocking to Kansas City and gigabit cities across the United States? Kansas City Startup Village says, “Yes indeed!”

Attendees in Kansas City for the recently Fiber to the Home Council’s conference, “From Gigabit Envy to Gigabit Deployed,” got a peek into the future of startup development. “The idea for KCSV came to us in September last year,” said co-founder Matthew Marcus in a panel session. “Our three buildings came on line with Google Fiber in the first neighborhood to get connected. Without any planning we began using these buildings to house entrepreneurs and create environments of collaboration and inspiration.”

Marcus owns one of the buildings, which are all within a block of each other, and hosts four companies including Local Ruckus that he co-founded with Adam Arredondo. Ben Barreth, a Web site builder and committed entrepreneur, bought one of the other homes, which he dubbed Homes for Hackers. Barreth provides free room and access to Google Fiber for startup entrepreneurs who can live in the house for three months and then move on to other locations.

14 Gigabit Success Stories. But Wait, There’s More!

Too often we see the incumbent propaganda that proclaims all community broadband networks to be failures. But nothing could be further from the truth as there are over 340 such networks, some having been around for 12 or 14 years. True, there are a tiny number of problem children, but four or five out of 340 pretty much spells.

That said, these networks have not had, nor will they have, an easy road to success. If your community plans to follow in their footsteps and leave big shoes for others to fill, you have to learn from those who’ve gone before. In my new e-book, Building the Gigabit City, I include a list of 14 of the 35 communities that own gigabit networks and were on my Gigabit Nation radio show. with an honorary mention of the Kansas Cities since Google actually owns that gigabit network.

Take some time to listen to these interviews. Here are 14 hours of valuable lessons, insights and practical advice from those in the trenches getting broadband done. Download my book (complements of Gigabit Squared) and get the inside scoop on these and many more communities with broadband networks of various capacities and technologies.