“Blue Sky Mining is written for government, universities, financiers,
entrepreneurs, established business owners looking to expand into new markets
and anyone interested in understanding why Silicon Valley has been so successful
in creating new industries and commercialising innovation over decades.”
EXTRACTS FROM THE BOOK BLUE SKY MINING – WWW.BLUESKYMININGBOOK.COM
QUOTES FOR BLUE SKY MINING
Jim Bidzos – Founder, Chairman and CEO, Verisign, Inc.
“Entrepreneurs, especially founder-CEO’s, are driven by a vision that compels them
forward, through obstacles, challenges, and adversity. The bigger the vision, the
stronger the drive—often becoming an obsession that lets nothing stop them from
realizing their dream. That’s what it takes to build a company from little more than
vision and desire, into a lasting global enterprise or great brand. In his book Blue Sky
Mining, Adrian nails the importance of this mindset that truly successful entrepreneurs
have from day one. They constantly aim higher when defining success, they find ways to
work with others that can help them get were they’re going, and they never give up, no
matter how bleak things may look or how many set backs they may experience. And
that focused, relentless drive to fulfilling a vision always plays a larger part in long-term
value creation than any other factor.”
EXTRACTS FROM THE BOOK BLUE SKY MINING – WWW.BLUESKYMININGBOOK.COM
QUOTES FOR BLUE SKY MINING
Doug Elix – Chair, Global Advisory Board, Advance. Retired Executive
Vice President and Group Executive, IBM.
“Many people are passionate about Australia’s future, but few are as committed to
doing something about it, as Adrian Turner. This book oozes with insight and
knowledge about the disciplined process of commercializing innovation. More
importantly it lays out for all to see, what Australia must do to invest in it’s greatest
sustainable asset—the ingenuity of its people. Here is an entrepreneur who has lived
this for more than 12 years, and now he demystifies the process of innovation and
the value Australia, and Australians, can get from commercializing it.
We should all read and take note. If we Australians are to have a great future and
be a competitive force in this globalised world, we need to get on board with what
Adrian is saying. Australia is fortunate to be blessed with natural resources. But,
being innovative is our long term future, and that comes not from good luck, but
hard work. This book tells us how.”
EXTRACTS FROM THE BOOK BLUE SKY MINING – WWW.BLUESKYMININGBOOK.COM
QUOTES FOR BLUE SKY MINING
Foreword by Ron Conway, Angel Investor
“…It’s this same dissatisfaction with the status quo in Australia that drove Adrian to
write this book. A frustration that Australia’s commercialisation ecosystem was in
crisis, and no one was addressing the issue head on. After years of investing, in
hundreds of startups I know that having the right ecosystem conditions for new
venture creation is crucial to stacking the odds of success in favor of the entrepreneur
and the new venture. They’re essential for providing good investor returns that drive
new investments. I've worked hard and been fortunate to have a front row seat for the
birth and scaling of many globally defining companies. I have invested in Google,
Facebook and Twitter. There is no doubt that Silicon Valley is the global innovation
commercialisation hotspot and I am privileged to be a part of it. But don’t think for a
minute that the ecosystem conditions that drive success here have been left to
chance…”
EXTRACTS FROM THE BOOK BLUE SKY MINING – WWW.BLUESKYMININGBOOK.COM
“Ask 10 people to define innovation and you’ll get 10 different answers. People
confuse it with entrepreneurship and, just as often, invention…invention is just one
type of innovation and it’s often not the most critical.”
EXTRACTS FROM THE BOOK BLUE SKY MINING – WWW.BLUESKYMININGBOOK.COM
EXTRACTS FROM THE BOOK BLUE SKY MINING – WWW.BLUESKYMININGBOOK.COM
STRONG RESEARCH DRIVEN
UNIVERSITIES WITH ENDOWMENTS
“Google was started at Stanford. The intellectual property
that was the initial foundation was spun out and the
university kept a relatively small percentage of the
resulting company. No onerous restrictions were placed on
the IP that would hinder Google’s ability to raise
additional capital. No onerous restrictions either on what
could and couldn’t be done with the intellectual property,
and no onerous managerial or business controls on the
resulting entity. The result was epic. According to the Wall
Street Journal, at time of IPO the university’s stake in
Google was worth $179.5 million. Since that time the
value of Google stock has increased almost 10-fold.”
EXTRACTS FROM THE BOOK BLUE SKY MINING – WWW.BLUESKYMININGBOOK.COM
HIGH TOLERANCE FOR RISK
“The tolerance for risk taking is a huge contributor to the
success of Silicon Valley, and not just for entrepreneurs.
Employees in the Valley understand the value of risk
taking. They know if a company is successful, their stock
options will be worth a lot of money. Specialised banks
show a willingness to offer venture debt and lines of credit
to new ventures with little or no operating history and
unproven revenue models. Attorneys are willing to work
pro bono until a new venture secures venture funding.
Landlords are willing to rent or lease space to new
ventures with no operating history. Residential landlords
and personal banks are willing to take risks and support
people who may have only just started working with a
new venture.”
EXTRACTS FROM THE BOOK BLUE SKY MINING – WWW.BLUESKYMININGBOOK.COM
ACCESS TO
SOPHISTICATED RISK CAPITAL
“Ron Conway is one of the most prolific and well known
angel investor in Silicon Valley. Ron is invested in my
company, Mocana. He was an angel investor in Google,
and is invested in Facebook, Twitter and hundreds of
other startups. He brings not only money but
connections, and is savvy in his investment
methodology. Investors like Ron also understand and
ensure that the early fundraising rounds are clean and
not overly aggressive to ensure that the new venture can
attract follow-on financing.”
EXTRACTS FROM THE BOOK BLUE SKY MINING – WWW.BLUESKYMININGBOOK.COM
KNOWLEDGE SHARING
“We see a wonderful dynamic in Silicon Valley around
knowledge sharing. People are willing to share their
experiences openly. I recall last year going to a local
Churchill Club event where Larry Ellison, CEO and a
founder of Oracle, was talking about what it was like
to be CEO of a fast-growing company at different stages
of its evolution. The Churchill Club, founded by Tony
Perkins and Rich Karlgaard, personifies this culture of
knowledge sharing with an annual calendar of highcaliber events that allow entrepreneurs to network and
learn from each others’ experiences.”
EXTRACTS FROM THE BOOK BLUE SKY MINING – WWW.BLUESKYMININGBOOK.COM
CREATIVE DESTRUCTION
“A great example of this in action in Silicon Valley is
Twitter. What few people know is that Twitter started out
as a side project by the founder of a company called
Odeo. Odeo was a blogging site that was going nowhere
fast. The founder, Jack Dorsey gave back Odeo investors’
money and offered them the chance to invest in Twitter
when it appeared Twitter had more potential, even
though it was still unproven. There aren’t many places in
the world where this would happen. On secondary
market exchanges, Twitter has a value today that is
approximately $4 billion, and some suggest as high as $8
billion.”
EXTRACTS FROM THE BOOK BLUE SKY MINING – WWW.BLUESKYMININGBOOK.COM
GLOBALLY EXPERIENCED
REPEAT ENTREPRENEURS
“What most people don’t know is that the founder and
CEO of SpaceX is Elon Musk. He is also the CEO and
founder of the electric car company Tesla, a NASDAQ
listed company with a market capitalisation of more than
$3.5 billion(24). He is also Chairman and primary investor
in the largest financier of solar installations in the U.S., a
company called Solar Winds. According to Business Week
Solar Winds is also preparing to file for an IPO and based
on stock transactions in secondary exchanges in January
2012, the company had an implied valuation of $828
million. Before starting or becoming an investor in these
companies, Elon was a founder of PayPal that was
acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion, and also Zip2 that was
acquired by Lycos for $307 million. At the time of the
publishing of this book, Elon Musk is 40 years old.”
EXTRACTS FROM THE BOOK BLUE SKY MINING – WWW.BLUESKYMININGBOOK.COM
CONSTRUCTIVE FAILURE
“Constructive failure means learning from the
experience of failure in a constructive way that benefits
the individuals involved as well as the ecosphere as a
whole.…On the surface, Go was a $75 million failure.
But the executive team learned an enormous amount
working together through those turbulent times. In
other non-financial ways it was not a failure at all: Bill
Campbell went on to run Intuit (and mentor other
CEOs), Stratton Sclavos went on to help start Verisign,
Mike Homer went on to help start Netscape and Randy
Komisar went on to run Lucas Entertainment.”
EXTRACTS FROM THE BOOK BLUE SKY MINING – WWW.BLUESKYMININGBOOK.COM
SUPPORTIVE
GOVERNMENT POLICY
“Another example of supportive regulation is the ability
to hire employees ‘at will’ in California and Silicon
Valley, meaning they can also be let go at will and
without cause. This labor flexibility is crucial to a new
venture’s ability to adapt to the market and to the
ecosphere as a whole. Counter intuitively it doesn’t
lead to lower employment, it fosters new venture
creation, and consequently additional employment.
Still another example is the tax treatment of stock
options.”
EXTRACTS FROM THE BOOK BLUE SKY MINING – WWW.BLUESKYMININGBOOK.COM
SOCIAL CAPITAL
“What you see below are the linkages between one
venture capital firm, the companies it has invested in
and the executives within those companies. It is this
massive number of connections—the social capital—
that also allows venture firms to add value beyond
mere money. The firm shown here is Sequoia Capital,
investors in Yahoo and Google among others. They also
invested in YouTube, acquired by Google, as well as
Cisco and a whole host of companies Sequoia helped
grow that Cisco acquired over the years.”
EXTRACTS FROM THE BOOK BLUE SKY MINING – WWW.BLUESKYMININGBOOK.COM
POSITIVE AGGREGATE RETURNS
“In Silicon Valley the financial returns for winning
investments are huge. They need to be, in order to
compensate for the failures or losses. Silicon Valley has
spawned iconic global businesses, providing stellar
investor returns. Benchmark Capital put $6.7 million
into eBay and two years later the stake was worth $5
billion. What good Silicon Valley investors do better
than anyone else is help turn small companies into
massively profitable, global companies.”
EXTRACTS FROM THE BOOK BLUE SKY MINING – WWW.BLUESKYMININGBOOK.COM
EXTRACTS FROM THE BOOK BLUE SKY MINING – WWW.BLUESKYMININGBOOK.COM
“Even if the commodities boom last decades, Australia is in trouble. In Silicon Valley
it took 60 years to create the structural, cultural and financial infrastructure to
repeatedly create new billion dollar technology based industries.…”
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WWW.BLUESKYMININGBOOK.COM