It's one reason to go to the valley, but not the only one. When I moved to the valley last year, everyone asked me why? I said "People". Those people could be new friends at other startups, future talent for my company, future informal advisors, potential investors, or an awesome bartender at the Olde Pro in Palo Alto. The Valley exposed me to people that I couldn't have met anywhere else.
If you love technology and startups, you should probably give it a shot out there. Just because you move doesn't mean you'll have magic VC genies grant you three rounds of funding. You will definitely meet some awesome people along the way.
Agree about the other benefits in addition to access to VCs, but it's still arguable if they're worth the higher cost of living. If you're a bootstrapped startup, you'll hit ramen profitability much sooner elsewhere. When you have an infinite runway, you'll have infinite time to find people as well :).
Definitely about the people. Unless you are the founder of a company, you are never working for the _current_ company, but instead are working for the next company (in which you will be a founder, or an early stage employee that gets a good chunk of equity) - you need to demonstrate that you are someone they want to hire.
With the possible exception of craigslist, where they manage to accomplish heroic feats with very little in the way of staff, any company that is eyeballing $1B+ market-cap will grow to hundreds, and possibly thousands of employees.
Where else on earth can you find such a concentration of DBAs, Sysadmins, Designers, Tech-Friendly-Lawyers, Developers, Product Manager who have all three of the following characteristics:
o Very, Very good at their job.
o Real world experience in several major companies.
o And, most importantly, willing to go to work for a "lets throw caution to the wind" startup.
Change is the only constant in the valley. People here, for whatever reason, are just comfortable changing jobs, sharing information, and building new things.
The weather is astoundingly good. Never too hot or too cold - 350 / 365 days in the year. And the other 15 usually mean having to actually turn on your heater or open a window on a warm summer night.
The peninsula, for the most part, does suck in terms of lifestyle. There are exceptions (Murphy Street in Sunnyvale, Good portions of San Francisco, downtown San Jose on a Saturday night) - but, in general, it's mile upon mile of suburbia and strip malls. This is not Manhattan or downtown Vancouver. (On the flip side, with few distractions there is more time to get work done)
The major downside is that unless you are filthy rich or already a home owner, the only sane strategy (unless you don't mind commuting for 90-120 minutes each morning) is to rent.
With all that said, if what you are looking to do is grow a company organically, and have your eyes set on something more sane like a $10mm-$100mm market cap over 5-10 years, there are probably a lot of ways to succeed without being in the middle of it all.
I live over in Australia -- My cofounder and I are in Bay Area (visiting) and the access to having access to the people/minds here is astounding... And as you allude to - it's not just hackers, it's a whole ecosystem of people that can contribute to your idea.
Your probability of success is higher in the Valley. Doesn't mean you can't be successful elsewhere. I don't understand why people can't reconcile these two statements.
If you like your lifestyle where you are, by all means, stay. If you can find investors, lawyers, and accountants (assuming you want them) that you trust, stay where you are.
But if you're just a couple of crazy kids with a work ethic and an idea to change the world, and if you are willing to do everything possible to give your startup the highest probability of success, go to the Valley.
Your probability of success is higher in the Valley
Your probability of flipping heads is higher than your probability of rolling 1 on a six-sided die: X = .5, Y =~ .167. I have yet to even hear of a good setup for measuring X or Y, to say nothing of actual numbers for them, for measuring "probability of success in a startup". Heck, I have never even heard a defensible universalizable definition of success for a startup.
Incidentally, and this has always bothered me about statements like "give your X the highest probability of Y": do people routinely get the opportunity to run a simple random sample of startups, marry a simple random sample of women, raise a simple random sample of children, etc? No? Then why do we bastardize statistics in this manner.
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, Friendfeed adds Seesmic to their site.
Outside of the valley, something like this isn't possible. The spirit of startups lets companies be a lot more relaxed and open to new possibilities.
...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 idiots?
Some people like Silicon Valley, some people don't. To each his own.
Silicon Valley has a huge population of smart tech workers. There are certainly advantages to running a tech startup there. Other aspects of the area detract from the quality of life, however.
I live in the bay area, but can't stand Silicon Valley's feeling of endless suburbia. I don't think strip malls and sprawling apartment complexes make a good living environment for me. Some people prefer it, however. Silicon Valley is for them. It is not for me.
The guy in the video makes a point about external funding: a lot of well-known, large tech companies accepted money only after they were already profitable and did so in order to expand. That seems really sane to me - capital seems like a magnifier for a process that either produces money or consumes money. I suspect a lot of companies that succeed with external money would have succeeded without it and that a lot of companies that fail without external money would have failed with it.
There is not much substance to this article. It doesn't really even build on the title. It's just a bunch of quotes about VC funding and startup culture by a couple bloggers who live in Wisconsin and China. And, a video of a random investor from Texas.
I feel like they're riffing about an imagined startup culture that died out in 2001.
No more surprising than the fact that so many people in the valley say being in the valley is important.
I notice that in the bay area, or at least SF, "startup" is assumed to mean a web site or web app of some sort. So when I hear claims that the bay area is the best place for a startup, I don't necessarily disagree, but I parse "startup" as "web app startup".
[+] [-] jasonlbaptiste|17 years ago|reply
If you love technology and startups, you should probably give it a shot out there. Just because you move doesn't mean you'll have magic VC genies grant you three rounds of funding. You will definitely meet some awesome people along the way.
[+] [-] zhyder|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ghshephard|17 years ago|reply
With the possible exception of craigslist, where they manage to accomplish heroic feats with very little in the way of staff, any company that is eyeballing $1B+ market-cap will grow to hundreds, and possibly thousands of employees.
Where else on earth can you find such a concentration of DBAs, Sysadmins, Designers, Tech-Friendly-Lawyers, Developers, Product Manager who have all three of the following characteristics: o Very, Very good at their job. o Real world experience in several major companies. o And, most importantly, willing to go to work for a "lets throw caution to the wind" startup.
Change is the only constant in the valley. People here, for whatever reason, are just comfortable changing jobs, sharing information, and building new things.
The weather is astoundingly good. Never too hot or too cold - 350 / 365 days in the year. And the other 15 usually mean having to actually turn on your heater or open a window on a warm summer night.
The peninsula, for the most part, does suck in terms of lifestyle. There are exceptions (Murphy Street in Sunnyvale, Good portions of San Francisco, downtown San Jose on a Saturday night) - but, in general, it's mile upon mile of suburbia and strip malls. This is not Manhattan or downtown Vancouver. (On the flip side, with few distractions there is more time to get work done)
The major downside is that unless you are filthy rich or already a home owner, the only sane strategy (unless you don't mind commuting for 90-120 minutes each morning) is to rent.
With all that said, if what you are looking to do is grow a company organically, and have your eyes set on something more sane like a $10mm-$100mm market cap over 5-10 years, there are probably a lot of ways to succeed without being in the middle of it all.
[+] [-] jwilliams|17 years ago|reply
I live over in Australia -- My cofounder and I are in Bay Area (visiting) and the access to having access to the people/minds here is astounding... And as you allude to - it's not just hackers, it's a whole ecosystem of people that can contribute to your idea.
[+] [-] sachinag|17 years ago|reply
If you like your lifestyle where you are, by all means, stay. If you can find investors, lawyers, and accountants (assuming you want them) that you trust, stay where you are.
But if you're just a couple of crazy kids with a work ethic and an idea to change the world, and if you are willing to do everything possible to give your startup the highest probability of success, go to the Valley.
[+] [-] patio11|17 years ago|reply
Your probability of flipping heads is higher than your probability of rolling 1 on a six-sided die: X = .5, Y =~ .167. I have yet to even hear of a good setup for measuring X or Y, to say nothing of actual numbers for them, for measuring "probability of success in a startup". Heck, I have never even heard a defensible universalizable definition of success for a startup.
Incidentally, and this has always bothered me about statements like "give your X the highest probability of Y": do people routinely get the opportunity to run a simple random sample of startups, marry a simple random sample of women, raise a simple random sample of children, etc? No? Then why do we bastardize statistics in this manner.
[+] [-] vaksel|17 years ago|reply
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, Friendfeed adds Seesmic to their site.
Outside of the valley, something like this isn't possible. The spirit of startups lets companies be a lot more relaxed and open to new possibilities.
[+] [-] nostrademons|17 years ago|reply
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 idiots?
[+] [-] axod|17 years ago|reply
We do have email, IRC, etc etc these days.
[+] [-] blackguardx|17 years ago|reply
Silicon Valley has a huge population of smart tech workers. There are certainly advantages to running a tech startup there. Other aspects of the area detract from the quality of life, however.
I live in the bay area, but can't stand Silicon Valley's feeling of endless suburbia. I don't think strip malls and sprawling apartment complexes make a good living environment for me. Some people prefer it, however. Silicon Valley is for them. It is not for me.
[+] [-] garply|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] menloparkbum|17 years ago|reply
I feel like they're riffing about an imagined startup culture that died out in 2001.
[+] [-] riferguson|17 years ago|reply
Mike was being coy when he described himself as a "former Microsoft employee", but dismissing him as a "random investor from Texas" is silly.
http://people.forbes.com/profile/michael-j-maples/49137 http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CE2D81038F... http://www.alibre.com/corporate/management.asp
[+] [-] dejb|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|17 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jdrock|17 years ago|reply
I think the conclusion borders on comedic. Only a miniscule # of companies should not be thinking of this way.
[+] [-] unknown|17 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] racy_rick|17 years ago|reply
Looking for a great city to start you startup? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=518379
[+] [-] rjurney|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] macco|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mattj|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paulgb|17 years ago|reply
I notice that in the bay area, or at least SF, "startup" is assumed to mean a web site or web app of some sort. So when I hear claims that the bay area is the best place for a startup, I don't necessarily disagree, but I parse "startup" as "web app startup".
[+] [-] patio11|17 years ago|reply