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Mark Suster on Seattle and how a few key people can transform a community

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Re: Mark Suster on Seattle and how a few key people can transform a community

#31

Post by mechazoidal »

gills wrote: post #29
mechazoidal wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possibly the Seattle Freeze? http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/pacificnw/2005/0213/cover.h... In the 5 years after college that I lived in the city proper, the only tech group I managed to hang around was Seattle.RB, and only a few meeting at that.

In my 31 years of Seattle I guess I've found that friendships here are made and kept by doing active stuff together. Like camping, or boating, or cycling. There's not a lot of interest in "hey, want to loaf around together for a couple hours?" A lot of folks I know seem to tolerate the Seattle weather only because the summers and activities are great; killing time as bumps on a log is kind of silly. Or maybe I'm just…

But do you invite other people, or have some way of introducing others to it? That's kind of what I'm getting at: regardless of the activity, there's a social disconnect for getting people involved if they're not already in a circle of friends--and the few circles I was in didn't intersect at all.

It's not necessarily an insurmountable gap but it's enough to intimidate most people who aren't already outgoing, or who are accustomed to a friendlier town.

I grew up in Redmond, went to college at WSU, and moved into Seattle in 2002. For the longest time after that, when walking into a bar or show, I had to keep persuading myself that people were not going to point and scream at me like Donald Sutherland in the 70's Body Snatchers movie.

Re: Mark Suster on Seattle and how a few key people can transform a community

#32

Post by gerner »

mechazoidal wrote: post #21
stevenj wrote: post #3

I may be wrong about this, but I sense that Seattle's startup scene is definitely lacking something important. I can't put my finger on it, but I think it's there. In my opinion, people here seem pretty risk-averse (ie few want to jump and do a startup, especially people in their twenties). It kind of seems like people lack the drive to "change the world". Instead, people seem pretty laid back here. It's almost as if…

Possibly the Seattle Freeze? http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/pacificnw/2005/0213/cover.h... In the 5 years after college that I lived in the city proper, the only tech group I managed to hang around was Seattle.RB, and only a few meeting at that.

There is a ton of casual tech stuff going on in Seattle. check out http://www.seattletechcalendar.com, or (disclosure: my blog) http://fourthirtysix.com/tech-sci/

We're not lacking the meetups, the events (Seattle 2.0 awards tonight!) We're lacking the leadership and super-stars participation in the community. While I see Dave Schappell at Hops and Chops, I don't feel like others mingling with us casual masses without it being self promotional.

I want to go to some event (and Hops and Chops seems like a good venue), have a real conversation with the CTO of a startup about solving some tech or product challenge. Or I want to hear about how some CEO got started over a beer. And I want to meet another super-star who's actively looking for help.

Re: Mark Suster on Seattle and how a few key people can transform a community

#33

Post by vertr »

gerner wrote: post #32
mechazoidal wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possibly the Seattle Freeze? http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/pacificnw/2005/0213/cover.h... In the 5 years after college that I lived in the city proper, the only tech group I managed to hang around was Seattle.RB, and only a few meeting at that.

There is a ton of casual tech stuff going on in Seattle. check out http://www.seattletechcalendar.com , or (disclosure: my blog) http://fourthirtysix.com/tech-sci/ We're not lacking the meetups, the events (Seattle 2.0 awards tonight!) We're lacking the leadership and super-stars participation in the community. While I see Dave Schappell at Hops and Chops, I don't feel like others mingling with us casual masses witho…

I agree. The Seattle startup culture reflects the city's passive agressive and cold nature. CEO's and other execs stick to their small circles.

Re: Mark Suster on Seattle and how a few key people can transform a community

#35

Post by neworbit »

daveschappell wrote: post #6
stevenj wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think it's just more that people are focused on their own thing, by and large, vs. getting out with a small % of their time and building a community for the greater good. Ya, they're not enough "crazy" people. I think Seattle needs a big consumer-based (2.0 or 3.0) hit. It needs a Facebook, a Groupon, a Twitter, a Skype, a LinkedIn, an Etsy, a Dropbox.

you mean, like an Amazon? or a Starbucks? :-) or, if you want to be cynical that Amazon's a long time ago... how about like an AWS, or a Kindle? The innovation's here -- we just need to get more commingling going on it's going to happen -- if you're in town, reach out, please -- would love to have you help

Amazon and Microsoft do not like startups - they prefer to build things internally. And when they do buy startups they tend to kill them. Yes, IMDB is a nice exception, and lately they tend to buy firms and let them run on their own (Zappos) but Amazon got too burned during the dot com runup buying firms that turned out to not be a good match, a la Junglee.

Re: Mark Suster on Seattle and how a few key people can transform a community

#36

Post by gills »

mechazoidal wrote: post #31
gills wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my 31 years of Seattle I guess I've found that friendships here are made and kept by doing active stuff together. Like camping, or boating, or cycling. There's not a lot of interest in "hey, want to loaf around together for a couple hours?" A lot of folks I know seem to tolerate the Seattle weather only because the summers and activities are great; killing time as bumps on a log is kind of silly. Or maybe I'm just…

But do you invite other people, or have some way of introducing others to it? That's kind of what I'm getting at: regardless of the activity, there's a social disconnect for getting people involved if they're not already in a circle of friends--and the few circles I was in didn't intersect at all. It's not necessarily an insurmountable gap but it's enough to intimidate most people who aren't already outgoing, or who…

Indeed. Most of my friends I have met through work or church or other friends; some sort of pre-existing common cause. Cultivating friendships "from scratch", so to speak, is admittedly much more difficult.

On topic, that feature of Seattle may have some bearing on entrepreneurs in search of capital or employees or a support network. But it seems orthogonal to actually taking the plunge; you're either going to do it, or keep talking about it.

(Also, I think we may have been in some classes together at WSU! We must know some of the same people, you're 3 degrees away on LinkedIn.)

Re: Mark Suster on Seattle and how a few key people can transform a community

#37

Post by mechazoidal »

gills wrote: post #36
mechazoidal wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But do you invite other people, or have some way of introducing others to it? That's kind of what I'm getting at: regardless of the activity, there's a social disconnect for getting people involved if they're not already in a circle of friends--and the few circles I was in didn't intersect at all. It's not necessarily an insurmountable gap but it's enough to intimidate most people who aren't already outgoing, or who…

Indeed. Most of my friends I have met through work or church or other friends; some sort of pre-existing common cause. Cultivating friendships "from scratch", so to speak, is admittedly much more difficult. On topic, that feature of Seattle may have some bearing on entrepreneurs in search of capital or employees or a support network. But it seems orthogonal to actually taking the plunge; you're either going to do it,…

I definitely agree that entrepreneurs are going to take the plunge or not. I'm focused on the support network / employee angle, and harkening back to daveschappell's point that the circles don't really connect. There are communities, yes, but no sense of overall community that you can get a starting point in. It seemed like tribes all the way down: ex-[Amazon | MS | Google], UW clubs, etc. And if you didn't know where to begin, there wasn't an easy way to find someone to ask.

Case in point: if I'd known there were more startups looking for talent, I probably wouldn't have moved out to the eastern part of the state in 2007. At the time, my options after burnout+dismissal seemed to be 'work for another large company'(which I'm still wary of), 'pursue your own idea on your lonesome'(which I didn't have any of at the time) or 'don't work at all'.

(My best classes at WSU were with Hagemeister, Wang(CS460 FTW), and Biker Bob. Contributing to my slight-insecurity as a dev, I was also part of the Benson class that petitioned to have him removed: for tossing us a description of car/cdr and expecting us to build a complete Lisp in SML)

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