Live data from Hacker News

The Trouble with Bubbles (talent, angel & incubators… oh my)

calacanis.com

1–10 of 21 posts

Re: The Trouble with Bubbles (talent, angel & incubators… oh my)

#3
"With Twitter, Zynga, Facebook and Google in the ultimate game of one-upmanship, small startups are simply not going to be able to compete for talent in the Valley." I disagree, there will always be a sizable handful of engineers that would rather work in a startup environment than in a big company like Google or Facebook.

Re: The Trouble with Bubbles (talent, angel & incubators… oh my)

#4
I liked that post from Jason, I found it quite insightful. I just disagree with the talent part. Yes, it's tough to hire the best in Silicon Valley, but frankly, moving to Oklahoma will not make it better.

Is there an angel bubble? There is definitely a major uptick. I agree with his reasoning. Angels have money. Even the stock market is back higher than it was before the 2008 crash. So cash is available. But for how long?

Re: The Trouble with Bubbles (talent, angel & incubators… oh my)

#5

1. What did I get right? 2. What did I get wrong? 3. What did I miss? Interested to hear yc folks thoughts on the incubator bubble that the massive success of YC and TechStars has caused.

My question from this was, if you shouldn't be in Silicon Valley or NYC and choose a different city, how does that affect your ability to raise money? And what does it cost to give up some of the community/cross-pollination effect that goes on in those major areas?

Re: The Trouble with Bubbles (talent, angel & incubators… oh my)

#8
The following quote reminds me a lot of what pg said in "Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy"

Let me repeat that: great startups grow independently of the stock market.

The fact is, the public markets rarely have much effect on a startup at all.

Re: The Trouble with Bubbles (talent, angel & incubators… oh my)

#9
post #5

1. What did I get right? 2. What did I get wrong? 3. What did I miss? Interested to hear yc folks thoughts on the incubator bubble that the massive success of YC and TechStars has caused.

My question from this was, if you shouldn't be in Silicon Valley or NYC and choose a different city, how does that affect your ability to raise money? And what does it cost to give up some of the community/cross-pollination effect that goes on in those major areas?

To fully address that question you'd probably want to review the meta coverage of the topic. I'm not offering a comprehensive listing but these are two links you might consider:

http://www.readwriteweb.com/start/never-mind-the-valley/

http://www.fastcompany.com/1699323/why-you-should-start-a-co...

The key take away (for me) isn't that one city can make or break a company but there are certain considerations to make.

Caveat A: if your company success is predicated on being inside of a known echo chamber or circulatory system of talent -- by all means consider SF/NY/etc...

Caveat B: if you need to be aligned a specific niche that has no ties to an "NFL city" -- get away as fast as you can to where that niche can best be served with the basics quality of life that will draw the talent and team you desire.

SAS software is the largest privately held software company on the planet. Yet... they started not in SF/NY... but... North Carolina?

rip needle across the record

http://sas.com

RightNow is a public software company that was not started in SF/NY... but... Montana?

rip needle across the record

http://rightnow.com

There are more. Seriously. Think about it and do the searches. Download Crunchbase and plot it...

http://trends.techcrunch.com/

Don't take my text for it... Just pick up your head and look around to see a world that doesn't -exclusively- fit in zip codes starting with 941xxx and 112xxx.

Re: The Trouble with Bubbles (talent, angel & incubators… oh my)

#10

1. What did I get right? 2. What did I get wrong? 3. What did I miss? Interested to hear yc folks thoughts on the incubator bubble that the massive success of YC and TechStars has caused.

I have a globalization question. Where can I get data on which countries are spending money online, and which age groups are spending money online?
Post reply on HN