VentureBeat talks to Hickenlooper about Colorado as "new Silicon Valley"

VentureBeat asks Gov. John Hickenlooper about Colorado being the "next Silicon Valley."

Excerpt:

VentureBeat: How can you compete with a technology hub like Silicon Valley?

Hickenlooper: I think every community is competing. We have the Colorado Rockies, a great wonder of the world. We have one of the two or three most progressive public education systems. We have charter schools all over the place. Young people care about lifestyle. We have more music venues in Denver than Nashville or Austin [do].

VentureBeat: But how can you keep entrepreneurs in Colorado? 

Hickenlooper: Mergers and acquisitions [are a problem]. We don’t have aggregators … Oracle and Google and those guys. Generally, what’s interesting is that they don’t necessarily move them [the startups they acquire].  But they do want beachheads in other places. They look at the cost — in California, the tax burden is too great. Our biggest competitors are Portland, Seattle, and Austin. It’s not Silicon Valley.

Read the rest here.