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When I came to the United States in 2004 to attend university at Stanford, I was instantly inspired by the stories and advice from startup leaders in Silicon Valley and beyond, who had endeavoured to create new opportunities and improve lives around the world.

It had not yet been named Silicon Valley, but you had the defense industry, you had Hewlett-Packard. But you also had the counter-culture, the Bay Area. That entire brew came together in Steve Jobs.

Silicon Valley has some of the smartest engineers and technology business people in the world.

I don't think I could have thought of any place other than Stanford to leave Harvard for.

A remarkable thing about the Silicon Valley culture is that its status structure is so based on technical accomplishment and prowess.

The best training ground in the world is Silicon Valley and the tech space.

Elite colleges like Stanford are extremely inaccessible. They're failing in their mission to provide access.

Silicon Valley has evolved a critical mass of engineers and venture capitalists and all the support structure - the law firms, the real estate, all that - that are all actually geared toward being accepting of startups.

Silicon Valley isn't the only game in town. Tech is increasingly decentralized. Around the world, new tech centers with younger companies are able to embrace a different approach to talent: recruit locally, identify homegrown prospects and, in a phrase, bring them along for the ride.

You looked at Stanford or Harvard, or the University of Colorado, these were powerful engines just turning out people ready to create and grow businesses.