Tech Startups Don’t Need the Valley Unless They Need VC • Hacker News Board

Re: Tech Startups Don’t Need the Valley Unless They Need VC

#51

Post by trapper » Mon, Mar 16, 2009, 10:44 PM UTC

paulbaumgart wrote: post #43

trapper wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I refer to the book: how to measure anything. Measurement is the reduction in uncertainty, not paralysis by analysis. Often you can get great reductions in uncertainty with simple methods if you think for a few minutes. Some examples that the book may help you with could be looking at the governmental statistics for new businesses by geographical location (e.g. if they are better, then this must show in turnover righ…

That looks like it might be a worthwhile book. Thanks for the recommendation. I'm not "so certain that the probability of success is higher in the valley," but there are two main reasons I think there might be something to it: firstly the fact that people whose opinions I respect are saying it, and secondly the anecdotal-evidence-based but sensible conventional wisdom about meeting more relevant people (whether for f…

I am a full time skeptic and tend to notice these things :)

Re: Tech Startups Don’t Need the Valley Unless They Need VC

#52

Post by asdflkj » Tue, Mar 17, 2009, 1:06 AM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #19

vaksel wrote: post #12

I disagree. Have you taken a look at the culture in the valley? They are all about helping each other. i.e. I think this story was told at LeWeb. Seesmic founder lets Friendfeed guys know that their products would work really well together. The Friendfeed guys call back and tell him to drop by to discuss it. Loic hops into his car, drives 10 minutes to the Friendfeed offices, and after an hour or so of meetings, Frie…

...outside the Valley, most people have heard of neither FriendFeed nor Seesmic. ;-) The big advantage of living outside the valley is that you're closer to real customers - people who don't live and breathe technology 24/7. That can help you or hurt you, depending on your target market. Could something like MySpace, AOL or PlentyOfFish have started inside the Valley, considering that they succeeded by catering to id…

The problem with catering to idiots is that unless you're an idiot yourself--the particular kind of idiot comprising your target market--you have no idea what your customers want. Also, this approach would probably be too demoralizing to sustain for anyone without the record-label-executive state of mind, which is the opposite of the hacker state of mind.

Re: Tech Startups Don’t Need the Valley Unless They Need VC

#53

Post by Goladus » Tue, Mar 17, 2009, 1:42 AM UTC

staunch wrote: post #22

pg wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Living in the Valley is not especially expensive for founders. Buying a house in the Valley is notoriously expensive, because there is so much speculation built into prices (even now). But renting a two-bedroom apartment in Mountain View is no more expensive for equivalent quality of life than in Boston. We gave groups the same amount of money in Boston cycles as in Bay Area cycles, and we never noticed any differenc…

It may be similar to Boston, but it's far more expensive than living in many other parts of the country (or state).

If you can overcome the drawbacks of being away from a creative urban center, you can save a lot of money on housing.

http://utica.craigslist.org/apa/1077482911.html

$695/mo for a 2-bedroom apartment. Not a great neighborhood but could be worse. You'd be lucky to share a bedroom for $350 a month in Boston.

Many other expenses don't change much, though, like food, and some go up, like heating and electricity. And in Utica, the chance of overhearing someone talking about PhD-level computer science while you're out to eat is virtually zero.