It’s time we heard this said of NZ’s start-ups!

Several organizers noted that Silicon Valley’s original success as an innovation center was largely because of business and social networks developed over several decades in a community of venture capitalists and technologists.

The Net’s level playing field
Now, they said, with the Internet supplementing and replacing traditional face-to-face social networks, Silicon Valley might be losing its competitive advantage.

“The epicenter was Silicon Valley, but that has created a wave of innovation that has now reached the entire world,” said Yossi Vardi, an Israeli entrepreneur and investor who financed his son’s development of ICQ, an early Internet chat program later sold to America Online.

Also, some interesting stats on Skype:

Like many participants here, Zennstrom voiced the opinion that Internet-based commerce would accelerate in its disruptive effect on traditional businesses. Skype, for example, now says that it carries 4.4 percent of all worldwide long-distance calling.