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On a cold night about three years ago in a small office space.
I sat a round handed around computers of startup colleague.
In deep anticipation, we have just launched
the downloadable version of an operating system that we'd started.
It enabled you to put your Android mobile apps on a desktop and experience it.
We wondered,
if people would use this product in different countries around the world.
Within a week we have over 1 million people,
in over 180 countries use this product.
Eventually it is integrated in to Chrome OS,
which is use by hundreds of million people.
A group of entrepeneur was not here in Silicon Valley or in the United States.
We were in a developing country, we were in Beijing, China.
And that really inspired me when I looked back on that night.
Because I myself I'm from a developing country.
You see ten years ago, I moved from my home country of Zimbabwe to China.
Initially is planning to spend one year learning how to read, write and
speak mandarin.
When I landed in China and saw the remarkable innovation that was there,
I decided that was the place that I had to be.
And I said to myself, Tawanda,
you need to stay here in China to make that happen and be part of it.
You see, the image I had in my mind of innovation was
Hewlett-Packard in a Palo Alto garage a few miles from here,
making technology that would start in Silicon Valley and
trickle down to the rest of the world.
And the world is changing, this used to be the place where this used to be the only
place where you could get opportunities to start an innovative tech company.
But I realize that genius is equally distributed but opportunity is not.
It was genius in an hungarian boy who survived holocaust and
communist dictatorship.
To come to United States and become the founding CEO of Intel and
the greatest manager in the generation, Andy Grove.
He was genius in a Russian-Jewish boy whose family was persecuted in the 1970s,
and came here to seek refuge.
And eventually co-founded Google, Sergey Brin.
There was genius in a South African dreamer who came here,
dropped out of his Stanford PHD in two days, and eventually co-founded PayPal,
becoming today one of the boldest and most iconic entrepreneurs, Elon Musk.
Even in Steve Jobs, whose father moved here from Syria.
Countless Chinese and India entrepreneurs,
engineers have been the bedrock of talents in Silicon Valley in the last few decades.
Because this was the only place where you could find an opportunity
to grow in tech company.
Genius is equally distributed but opportunity is not.
Yet again the world is changing, more and more springs of innovation are rising
up in black places of the world that used to be deserts of poverty and backwardness.
We are able to see that over the next few years,
the next billion people coming on life for the first time.
They're not going to be in western Europe or in North America.
They'll be in emerging markets throughout Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
We'll see a huge middle class emerging as people migrate from rural to urban areas,
to mega cities in Jakarta, Indonesia and Delhi, India.
And Sao Paulo, Brazil, as well as Lagos, Nigeria.
In all these places, many talented people be able to stay at home and
build entrepreneurial dreams that they could only build here.
We look as well as how ideas can crop up in the most unexpected of places.
Growing up in Zimbabwe, it was very clear to me that
we would save on gas by sharing rides with each other.
We would invite strangers into our cars,
so that they would be able to hop in the ride and give us a small amount of money,
and together we bring down the overall cost of the right.
This is commonplace in my country.
Over a decade ago, an American entrepreneur Logan Green visited
Zimbabwe saw that this is the way that we got around
I was inspired to come back to the United States and
launch Zimride, a startup that provided a carpooling service for
students who at the end of the school year could share rides to go home.
This team and idea evolved into Lyft,
The ride-sharing application that many of us use, and this
industry of more than hundreds of billions of dollars, has taken over the world.
Just by show of hands, how many of us have used Lyft or Uber over the last month?
How many of us knew that the idea was germinated
in a small Southern African country?
Not as many as I thought, yeah.
>> [LAUGH] >> As we can see,
ideas crop up in the most unexpected of places.
A couple of years ago, I had the fortune of working with many entrepreneurs who
realized the unique opportunities that come in emerging markets.
I run a startup accelerator called Beijing Tech Hive,
that's invested in early stage entrepreneurs in the mobile internet.
These entrepreneurs were able to see that in this world that we live in,
a new paradigm of making products for and
with users, used to come into plays.
It was by a Chinese entrepreneur,
that one of the most popular US apps for teenagers today.
Tick tock, we started it required someone who realized what it really means
to be mobile fest, to have never heard another product, and
we never had a desktop or laptop as the only channel to the internet.
Our world is changing much much faster than we realize it.
In parts of the world that we used to say lacked opportunity
they continue to be raised that entrepreneurs, regards of where they're.
Can make a new future and create new innovation for us.
I don't dare say that Silicon Valley is no longer
the eminent center of innovation in the world.
It is, otherwise I wouldn't be here.
>> [LAUGH] >> And there's no question
that the United States has created one of the greatest engines of start and
nurturing new businesses that the world has ever known.
But were able to see that different parts of the world are launching other
opportunities and hot bed innovation that continue to be there, and
we have a choice to make.
We can continue to over invest in highly expensive startups that can't even
afford the garage as those Hewlett-Packard entrepreneurs were able to do, or
we could direct our capital to parts of the world that desperately need just that,
to take advantage of their genius and the innovation.
We could continue to believe that all great ideas
will come from this rich ecosystem.
At Stanford, Silicon Valley, and the United States or
we could realize that if we open our minds and are intellectually humble.
At more and more ideas can spring after this places.
It is after all at a time now today when we celebrate Apple Pay and
Android Pay as the latest innovation and payments, but
we realized that it wasn't over a decade and a half ago.
That in East Africa, where we lacked traditional banking branches
to provide to our rural communities, we had no option but
to leapfrog to mobile banking, which is now commonplace.
We have an opportunity to open our minds to opportunities.
And ideas that come from places that are traditionally despised and
considered as backward.
If you are a dreamer, or an innovator, regardless of the way you are, you can
in this world that's highly connected start something right from scratch.
The era of trickle down technology is over.
Thank you.
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