I wrote about Austin’s singular investor environment for Austin Startup last year and it continues to sit atop the list of most popular posts on the site. That is less about my writing skills and more about the fact that Austin’s position in the global business and tech landscape is at the forefront of everyone’s mind. There is no better evidence of this than the recent Statesman article, and subsequent responses, that asked that tried-and-true question, “What will it take to make Austin the next Silicon Valley?”

One year after my initial post, I’m much wiser about the realities of building a startup. I’m also more hopeful about Austin’s prospects of becoming a world-class startup community in its own right. And I’m wondering what exactly we’re aiming for when we reference ‘the next Silicon Valley.’

I had a conversation recently with a young, ambitious female entrepreneur based in the Bay Area. Her company has a stellar reputation, branding and alliances, but is constructed of more duct tape and pipe cleaners than most people realize. I was surprised at how successful she’d been to date, considering her lack of a discernible roadmap or ability to enunciate her offerings.

I’m not sharing this to pick apart her business. On the contrary, I’m in awe of how much she’s accomplished and how… un-female she is in her brashness and salesmanship. I think her attitude is at the core of the Silicon Valley Secret: I’m an entrepreneur. I live in the global hub of startups. Even if I fail, I am still more creative and forward-thinking than 99% of the population. Therefore, I am powerful.

My friend Stacey Higginbotham wrote a fabulous piece just before SxSW that touches on this idea, ‘Have Startups Become a Fetish?”

“The thousands of startups today that are pitching themselves at app competitions or in industry conferences all seem to think being a startup is enough. That daring to come up with some idea, any idea, and build a beta site is enough. That the users will come and then the business model will come and then the money will come.”

I would argue that this attitude is almost exclusively Silicon Valley, borne of an environment that has produced some world-changing technologies, along with an immense amount of wealth and young celebrities not necessarily steeped in business savvy. Austin entrepreneurs, generally speaking, lack this swagger. This is not a bad thing. If my years in the Bay Area taught me anything, it’s that bloat inevitably deflates, be it big ideas, big valuations, or big egos.

I don’t want Austin to be Silicon Valley. I want it to stay Austin. I want our city to continue to have a multi-faceted focus on music, film, government, and education, in addition to startups. Our place in the real world is so incredibly valuable. The ability to know when a business idea is bullshit and whether consumers/clients would actually pay for it is something Silicon Valley does not have. Inundating our fair city with every type of dot com lacking vowels in its name would only add to an already over-loaded bubble. The more interesting question is, how can Austin inspire better ways of doing business and subsequently attract companies, talent, and money that want to support that mindset? I think the answer lies in Austin’s hippie roots: build a commune.

Don’t worry, I’m not proposing we all move to Kerrville and stop shaving. What I am proposing is that we take our abundant willingness to support each other and turn it into an actual entity.

This idea isn’t sprouting anew from my head. A lot of people seem to be dancing around it lately. Josh Baer in his post linked above: “We would benefit from a larger, central community meeting space and co-working facility.” Bob Metcalfe in the Statesman piece: “How about regular entrepreneur gatherings at the statehouse or in Longhorn Stadium or along Sixth Street or at the new Formula One track?” And during a recent lunch with Tech Ranch’s Kevin Koym, he hit the nail precisely on the head: “It’s time for Austin to tap into its real competitive advantage – the power of our community in working with each other. We need to create a deeper nexus of collaboration and coordination, a deeper density of startup activity in one part of town.”

This isn’t another organization. It’s a coalescing of existing organizations, a one-stop shop for everything entrepreneurial in Austin. We rent a large space downtown and turn it into Austin Startup Central, with organizations like Bootstrapped, Capitol Factory, Sharp Skirts, Austin Women in Tech, Conjunctured, CoSpace, etc. each represented, be it through physical space, marketing collateral laying around or other possibilities. Several large meeting rooms for events, a bulletin board for announcements and job postings – the options are many. Think of it as a Startup Chamber of Commerce.

No one can deny that our business community has a lot going for it, a fact we’re constantly reminded of in the press. Take a look at the sub-head on that CBS piece we all loved from January: “Entire Community Committed to Job Creation.” And that commitment has garnered us no less than the top spot in the entire nation. What kind of results could we achieve if we made that sub-head a physical reality?

In my opinion, I don’t think it’s possible otherwise. We’re a somewhat fractured business community, with one hand not aware of what the other is doing half the time. The efforts that are duplicated on several fronts are enough to make an entrepreneur’s head spin. Combining those efforts will only strengthen our organizations individually and our city as a whole.

That conversation with the female entrepreneur I referenced earlier had an interesting ending. Just before we hung up, she zinged me with “You’ve got to get out of Austin.” With over-inflated valuations appearing more and more often, the environment is ripe for that sentiment to be turned on its head. To conduct reasoned, reality-based business, you’ve got to get out of Silicon Valley. I can think of no better city to step up to the plate.