Why Startup Hubs Work
paulgraham.com
Why Startup Hubs Work
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Re: Why Startup Hubs Work
#2I wonder if an app that would let you list the one thing you need right now to move your project along would help... it would make the chance meeting phenomenon an internet occurrence, which seems like it would greatly facilitate finding that one person.
Re: Why Startup Hubs Work
#3I'm curious at Hacker News' thoughts on what it takes to start a startup hub.
For instance, here in Blacksburg, VA (Virginia Tech) a few local entrepreneurs and Angels are trying to get the startup community here off the ground. We've gone from little activity, to having a populated co-working space and regular meetups. The community is small and close; which is great for all those involved.
However, most companies that start here still aspire to move out to the Valley. The opportunities there still dwarf the opportunities here, and we're constantly in danger of losing what few founders we have.
Granted, Blacksburg isn't exactly a geographically optimal spot for techies to flock to. But is it possible that the larger hubs such as the Valley have too much pull for smaller communities to really take off?
Re: Why Startup Hubs Work
#4Paul (or anyone else), in note 3 you say "Starting a company is common, but starting a startup is rare. I've talked about the distinction between the two elsewhere..."
I'd appreciate any links to the places you've mentioned this.
Re: Why Startup Hubs Work
#5 For example, you start a site for college students and you decide to move to the Valley for the summer to work on it. And then on a random suburban street in Palo Alto you happen to run into Sean Parker
Re: Why Startup Hubs Work
#6This is a good piece, but, this is well-trodden ground.
This is "economies of agglomeration", and it's basic urban economics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_agglomeration
Re: Why Startup Hubs Work
#7I was actually having a conversation about this recently. A few of us were talking about how startups are almost "normal" here (Waterloo), so it doesn't seem odd to work 9am-10pm. But when you go home, people think you're crazy.
It's that subconscious influence that makes it so hard elsewhere. If enough people tell you that you're crazy, it takes a really special person to be able to shrug it off. I think the interesting thing here is that having a great co-founder has a very similar effect. I would even go as far as to say startup hubs and co-founders play a very similar role in keeping you going.
Re: Why Startup Hubs Work
#8I'm curious at Hacker News' thoughts on what it takes to start a startup hub. For instance, here in Blacksburg, VA (Virginia Tech) a few local entrepreneurs and Angels are trying to get the startup community here off the ground. We've gone from little activity, to having a populated co-working space and regular meetups. The community is small and close; which is great for all those involved. However, most companies t…
Just having a Hacker News meetup has helped London a lot i'd say, it's helped me find like minded people as I found there were a lot of 'old business' and finance folks going to the events that weren't designed for what they wanted to do in business.
London Hacker News is now the biggest (or top few) monthly startup meetup here.
Re: Why Startup Hubs Work
#9Paul (or anyone else), in note 3 you say "Starting a company is common, but starting a startup is rare. I've talked about the distinction between the two elsewhere..." I'd appreciate any links to the places you've mentioned this.
He discusses his definition of the difference in this essay: http://www.paulgraham.com/startupfunding.html
In particular,
There are millions of small businesses in America, but only a few thousand are startups. To be a startup, a company has to be a product business, not a service business. By which I mean not that it has to make something physical, but that it has to have one thing it sells to many people, rather than doing custom work for individual clients. Custom work doesn't scale. To be a startup you need to be the band that sells a million copies of a song, not the band that makes money by playing at individual weddings and bar mitzvahs.
I'm not sure it's the best way to distinguish, but it is how the term is often used, especially in the context of startup funding, where "startup" is used as a synonym for basically "the kind of thing a VC would want to fund".
Re: Why Startup Hubs Work
#10For the last paragraph in that post, the Valley is different (from NYC,Boston etc) in that it is NOT the hub of anything else...other cities are metropolitan areas of various things going in in them...unlike valley, where there is only a very narrow band of activities that thrive...