Location matters for your startup (with city comparisons)
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Location matters for your startup (with city comparisons)
1–10 of 51 posts
Re: Location matters for your startup (with city comparisons)
#2Good points, well made - I'll be over to SF in Jan!
Re: Location matters for your startup (with city comparisons)
#3Unfortunately it's almost impossible to move to these hot cities from many countries. Visa is really a problem. So we need to work hard to get our own local startup hub. I'm from Armenia.
Re: Location matters for your startup (with city comparisons)
#4Just remember quality of life with these things.
I know this will be an unpopular opinion round these parts, but SF is not somewhere I'd ever chose to live. The bad points vastly outweigh the good points for me.
Re: Location matters for your startup (with city comparisons)
#5Why density? Does density really matter? Isn't the absolute number more interesting because whatever be the chance of meeting an important (to your success) person, you have a bigger pool to pick from.
Case of city A: Say, there are 50,000 residents of which 500 are of interest. There's an event hosted and 25% of those "interesting" people show up. You, who's attending this event, have a pool of 125 people out of which, say 5% can help you AND you'll bump into. So chances are you'll meet 6 people. Density: 0.01.
Case of city B: 5,000 residents, 100 interesting, 25 show up, chances are you'll meet only 1 person. Density: 0.02 (double).
Re: Location matters for your startup (with city comparisons)
#6A more important factor compared with density is, in my view, whether startups are the main game in town. This determines what kind of talent you can attract.
In London you are competing with cash flow oriented industries that will set expectations for the compensation mix, so you are in practice left with somewhat marginal people and not the best. This crowding out effect, compounded by the relatively small exits produced in the UK and an inferior work ethic compared to the US, explains why both founders and employees are less good on average than in some other startup hubs.
For the UK startup scene to really succeed we basically need to destroy the banks and agencies.
Re: Location matters for your startup (with city comparisons)
#7A more important factor compared with density is, in my view, whether startups are the main game in town. This determines what kind of talent you can attract. In London you are competing with cash flow oriented industries that will set expectations for the compensation mix, so you are in practice left with somewhat marginal people and not the best. This crowding out effect, compounded by the relatively small exits pr…
Startups the main game in town; yup, it's a good point, and in Paul's essay he says that Silicon Valley is probably the only place where doing a startup is considered normal. In London it's absolutely not! London has a low density, but still in absolute terms the 3rd largest (by SD subscriber metrics) startup cluster in the world. The fact that startups are not the only game in town is both a positive and a negative. In Silicon Valley there is somewhat of an echo-chamber, and there really isn't anything but tech. London on the other hand is a huge city, the most multicultural on the planet, and can lay claim to being the centre of a number of important industries, including finance, media, music, fashion, etc. If you are doing a startup in any of those sectors Silicon Valley is probably not the most appropriate place to be.
Re: Location matters for your startup (with city comparisons)
#8Just remember quality of life with these things. I know this will be an unpopular opinion round these parts, but SF is not somewhere I'd ever chose to live. The bad points vastly outweigh the good points for me.
I guess everyone is different, I love silicon valley for many things, the quality of life being one of them (and the weather). Maybe it's just me but I'm from a cold, wet and windy country called Scotland :)
Re: Location matters for your startup (with city comparisons)
#9Why density? Does density really matter? Isn't the absolute number more interesting because whatever be the chance of meeting an important (to your success) person, you have a bigger pool to pick from. Case of city A: Say, there are 50,000 residents of which 500 are of interest. There's an event hosted and 25% of those "interesting" people show up. You, who's attending this event, have a pool of 125 people out of whi…
I think the truth is that the absolute number, along with density are both important. That's why Boulder - apparently 70% more entrepreneurial than Silicon Valley - cannot really claim to be better than SV, which has an entrepreneurial population 15 times larger.
Re: Location matters for your startup (with city comparisons)
#10Good points, well made - I'll be over to SF in Jan!
Look forward to seeing you there!