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Location matters for your startup (with city comparisons)

scott-allison.net

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Re: Location matters for your startup (with city comparisons)

#21

Post by iamelgringo »

Location matters. Even if you're boot strapping. I'm boot strapping Hackers & Founders.

In the past three months, I've met a CEO of a 300 person gaming company, M&A execs from Fortune 500's, Engineer[0] from Google Finance, the head of the Singularity Institute, artists that make 2 story flaming sculptures, an architect that works on computational architecture, a man who built a battery that charges in 10 minutes that is currently in use by Special Forces in Afghanistan, a former Yahoo VP, a VP from AT&T, the CTO of America and the man who wrote the Jobs bill... a person on the US Council of Foreign Relations, a man who helped the Arab spring flower in Egypt...

That's not to brag. I've simply been extremely deliberate about networking over the past 5 years.

In Silicon Valley, even after being here for 6 months. You probably don't realize it, but you're only 2 or 3 degrees of separation from everyone else who's really, really impressive in town.

To that density, add a culture that places an extremely high value on helping others out, and you have something amazing.

Re: Location matters for your startup (with city comparisons)

#22

Post by grigy »

nprincigalli wrote: post #19
robjohnson wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Not just in other countries, but many rural areas of the US. There are some incredibly talented people out there that may not be able to move for one reason or another. How do we bring these startup hub advantages to everyone?

This is how: http://steveblank.com/2011/06/01/why-board-meetings-suck-%E2... http://steveblank.com/2011/06/02/reinventing-the-board-meeti... http://www.leanlaunchlab.com/

Last one looks similar to Lean Startup Canvas - http://leancanvas.com. Though not sure how is it helpful in this case.

Re: Location matters for your startup (with city comparisons)

#23

Post by impendia »

maximusprime wrote: post #4

Just 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.

Fair enough.

But would you rather (a) live in your choice of San Francisco, New York, Austin, Boston, or Boulder; or (b) pick five cities at random from an alphabetical list and then choose one of them to live in?

I expect the vast majority of HN readers would choose (a). SF has some disadvantages (cold weather in summer, astronomical cost of living), but pretty much all startup hubs have a high concentration of energy and generally ambitious people.

Re: Location matters for your startup (with city comparisons)

#24

Post by pitdesi »

The density/city comparison thing is really hard to measure, but I'd argue it doesn't make a whole lot of sense:

Since people are showing off re SV, I'll do the same for Chicago- where I've in the past couple of weeks met: CTO for Barack Obama (ran into at falafel place), Founder of Groupon (stood next to at Weezer concert sponsored by NEA, talked to him for a bit), Dave McClure (He's an investor in us, we had dinner. He comes to Chicago often and spends a lot of time with us because we were his only investment here until last month), VP from Motorola Mobility (architecture tour), State Senator from Ohio (bar), A Macarthur Fellow Architect (female, met at bar), Vice Chairman for Goldman Sachs Investment Banking (happy hour), etc etc etc.

Furthermore, just by chance (ie we didn't know this going in and it is NOT the startup hub area within Chicago), within 3 blocks of FeeFighters office are: 37signals, SproutSocial, Threadless, Crowdspring, and several other startups. I don't see how it helps us significantly to bump into them (though we have helped our neighbors when they've had merchant account issues). Many people think it is a wasteland anywhere not the valley but I have seen that not to be the case here, in New York, and even in Pittsburgh.

So what is the difference between here and there? The largest differentiator I've noticed between the valley and elsewhere is funding. We raised most of our money in Chicago from VC's we really like, but could have raised easier on the west coast. A lot of top VC's prefer to have you close and told us flat out they would fund us if we moved there. We had term sheets dependent on us being in Austin, SF, and LA. I don't think it has had an effect one way or another on our business thus far.

Startups need money, and often flock to where it is. Things are changing all over the place though (Rich people in Chicago all of a sudden want to fund startups, will be interesting to see if that continues post-Groupon IPO) It also depends on your type of business. If you sell mainly to startups, you should probably be in the valley.

BTW in case you missed the discussion re: PG's original article, it is here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3077165

Re: Location matters for your startup (with city comparisons)

#25

Post by alecbenzer »

scottallison wrote: post #9
ashishgandhi wrote: post #5

Why 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.

I was really surprised to see Boulder on that list... had no idea that there were apparently many start ups there, even if it is just by percent.

Re: Location matters for your startup (with city comparisons)

#26

Post by scottallison »

pitdesi wrote: post #24

The density/city comparison thing is really hard to measure, but I'd argue it doesn't make a whole lot of sense: Since people are showing off re SV, I'll do the same for Chicago- where I've in the past couple of weeks met: CTO for Barack Obama (ran into at falafel place), Founder of Groupon (stood next to at Weezer concert sponsored by NEA, talked to him for a bit), Dave McClure (He's an investor in us, we had dinner…

Sounds like Chicago has a great community!

But you can't cite bumping into Dave McClure as evidence of anything other than Dave McClure travels, A LOT. ;)

Re: Location matters for your startup (with city comparisons)

#29

Post by a5seo »

Seems like a better approach would be to identify cities with the most startup "clusters"? Identify a cluster, then look at the population(s) of that census tract or zip or whatever.

Using city-level population just makes small cities look great (Boulder) and big cities look terrible (NYC), when I'm pretty sure there are neighborhoods in NYC that blow away Boulder.

Re: Location matters for your startup (with city comparisons)

#30

Post by a5seo »

iamelgringo wrote: post #21

Location matters. Even if you're boot strapping. I'm boot strapping Hackers & Founders. In the past three months, I've met a CEO of a 300 person gaming company, M&A execs from Fortune 500's, Engineer[0] from Google Finance, the head of the Singularity Institute, artists that make 2 story flaming sculptures, an architect that works on computational architecture, a man who built a battery that charges in 10 minutes tha…

Are there any practical (mathematical?) techniques to measure "openness" of a startup community's network?

You may be 2-3 degrees from John Doerr, but the question is, could you actually get a meeting with him?

Just my intuition, having lived in the Valley (8 years) and Austin (10 years) is that the Bay Area gets a B- for openness, compared to Austin which gets an A-.

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