Where you can find us all (if you're looking)

I read some interesting comments by some of the contributors on this site, that made mention of how cool it would be if we could all meet up somewhere. I decided to see who felt like putting themselves on the map... literally.

I've driven 6 hours to meet a potential partner face to face. I've flown across the continent to "ask" for an interview with a dream employer. If anyone out there is as passionate about meeting the dreamers of today and leaders of tomorrow, please feel free to say so.

Let me begin: I'm Andrew and I'm in Toronto (yes, Canadians take risks too)

At the very least, many of you will find yourselves in the same city as others on this site and to me that's about as good an excuse to have a 2am coffee as any I can think of.

I've got a bit of a selfish motivation in that I'm looking for partner #3 and I think face-to-face is the best way to see how well the ideas flow and personalities mesh (and if we're lucky, clash!).

I live in Chapel Hill, NC and I am very sad - THE TAR HEELS LOST!

Portland, OR - Moving to the Bay Area ASAP though

Canadians take risks? Who knew!? (My personal porfolio, %90 of it is companies located in Vancouver and listed in TSX or TSX-V.) Canada is the premier public fundraising country in the world, I believe. (The US stifles innovation with onerous SEC regulation... so Canada, which has smaller population, is the place to do your reverse merger, or buy shelf companies, etc.)

For the next few days, I live in Padova, Italy, but we're moving to Innsbruck, Austria where my wife found a good job doing research(*), and hopefully I will have some time to work on my own ideas.

Personally, I'm not convinced that the bay area is the be all and end all for startups. Maybe for classic style VC fueled all or nothing deals, but for those more interested in living cheaply and bootstrapping something, as long as you have a line on the good tech people in your area, perhaps you can make a go of it. Perhaps it's even easier to get a few of them on board, because there are relatively less other interesting things going on.

Europe definitely isn't conducive to startups though, even registering a company is quite expensive. I think if I were to head back to the states, I might pick someplace... not too isolated, but sort of "second tier". Portland, Oregon would be great..maybe someplace like Tucson in Arizona, Boulder Colorado, and so on.

(*) Biotech/medical - now there is a field where high capital requirements and lots of regulations mean that startups really can't happen without massive investments and thus tend to cluster very tightly in certain areas - bay area, san diego, boston.