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No, it's really not nonsense at all. I honestly couldn't think of a worse place to start a company than Silicon Valley, other than potentially a third world co
by NickKampe 14y ago
No, it's really not nonsense at all. I honestly couldn't think of a worse place to start a company than Silicon Valley, other than potentially a third world country with no internet. Extremely high costs of living, constant talent warfare, and absolutely terrible traffic at peak hours. Unless you're venture backed, stay the hell away from the bay.
- brador 14y agoCare to name a few better places?
- cobrausn 14y agoI'll just throw this out there: Kansas City? I am actually wondering if the Google Fiber initiative there will cause a startup boom.
- ChuckMcM 14y agoI'm going to guess Nick would suggest Missouri :-)
- NickKampe 14y agoKansas City, Austin, Denver, Boulder, Boston, and anywhere near a college campus
- majormajor 14y ago"Talent warfare" cuts both ways—it attracts talent that you could use. As long as people are willing to pay me to work on the California coast, I don't want to move back to the land of 100 degree summers and chilly winters.
- paul 14y agoThat explains why all the huge tech companies like google started in places like Kansas, not sv.
- NickKampe 14y agoFirst, Kansas City is located in Missouri, not Kansas. Second, the point in time which Google was created was an entirely different era of the Internet, Silicon Valley, and the world in general. Third, Google was founded while Sergey and Larry were studying at Stanford University, which I've stated in my other comments, is one of the most optimal places to start a company.... Nearby or on a college campus.
- anamax 14y ago> First, Kansas City is located in Missouri, not Kansas. Both Kansas and Missouri have a "Kansas City" and the two cities are adjacent to each other. > Third, Google was founded while Sergey and Larry were studying at Stanford University, which I've stated in my other comments, is one of the most optimal places to start a company.... Nearby or on a college campus. I think that Stanford is a unique and wonderful place, but there are lots of college campus' and a fair number of comparable schools, but only one SV.
- gms 14y agoOk, how about Facebook, Dropbox, AirBnB...?
- NickKampe 14y agoFacebook was first developed in Massachusetts while Mark was attending Harvard, another top tier educational institute. Dropbox and AirBnB were both YC backed companies, and due to the rules of YC, were essentially "forced" into migrating to the valley.
- jjtheblunt 14y agoIBM? Motorola? Monsanto? Most pharmaceuticals? GE? Illumina? There are many big tech companies established and past the startup stage elsewhere, really, some for decades. Google, Apple, Facebook, Oracle align with your assertion but not everything does.
- avichal 14y agoStarting a company is different than building a disruptive startup. Elad is really getting at potentially disruptive startups. Disruptive startups require a supportive ecosystem and often need to burn cash for years before they can monetize. Those sorts of companies are almost impossible to build outside of the ecosystem of Silicon Valley. Starting a small business or starting a nice, healthy enterprise business that makes a few million a year can be done in a lot of places but those are not disruptive startups.
- NickKampe 14y agoWhile I agree that starting a company is vastly different then starting a disruptive startup, other than the valley having a heavier density of VCs what you've stated about supportive startup ecosystems practically not existing anywhere else but in Silicon Valley is utterly false. Just look at New York, while it's honestly pretty much on par with SV in terms of cost of living, it's got a fantastic startup ecosystem in which many startups burn cash equally as fast. Step outside the SV bubble, I'd venture to say that two thirds of the states within the continental US have fantastic and thriving startup communities with plenty of talent and venture funding to boot. You just have to know where to look. As fellow nerds you should realize that with the power of the internet as well as the sheer amount of interconnectivity we now experience, there are virtually no location barriers.
- erichocean 14y agoOne thing I think SV companies don't try and do is actually figure out how to do disruptive startups that don't burn cash for the first few years. I'm sure that's because money is so readily available in SV, but there's no actual reasons why startups can't be disruptive and still cash-positive early. The main benefit of funding is actually social connections and social proof, not money, in my experience. (If anything, the money is a drawback, because it most cases it causes companies to do stupid things -- grow big when they haven't even figured out the product yet.)
- lsc 14y agoThe thing is, the scraps from the talent wars here are, generally speaking, competitive with the best from elsewhere. Yeah, wages are a whole lot higher; but I've moved back and forth from SV to the Sacramento area several times - It's really funny how a 3 hour drive takes me from being a 'meh' employee... middle of the road kind of guy to being the go-to guy; the best on the team. If anything, I think the talent gap makes the pay difference seem small. The cost of living gap isn't as huge as you'd think, either; especially for the childless (and let's be honest; Illegal or not, everyone discriminates against parents. Once you have kids, well, your job just isn't your highest priority anymore, and rightly so.) I mean, in the suburbs around sacramento, you get a reasonable single family home for the price of a silicon valley condo. Let's simplify and say you pay half as much for housing. But housing is a vanishingly small part of a nerd's budget, at least until kids come. Yeah, food, gas and stuff cost a little bit more... call it 10%? not a lot more. Cars, computers, non-real-estate capital goods and gadgets cost the same or are slightly cheaper in slicon valley. I mean, yeah, when it comes time to have kids? you have a point. But for childless nerds? silicon valley looks pretty nice.
- NickKampe 14y agoAs the founder of a bootstrapped startup, how do you expect to compete with the enormous employee salaries (which I'd like to point out is mostly due to the cost of living) being offered at other SV companies? Not to mention the various perks, such as insurance, meals, and transportation etc. that many SV companies provide. What about commercial real estate? Even in Sacramento, it's just simply not feasible.
- jvrossb 14y agoWe compete by offering a better work environment (from the perspectives of some), better problems to work on, equity in the company, and more control over the purpose and outcome of your work. What you're arguing is empirically false. I know tons of startups in the valley that are founded by people who started elsewhere and moved here. Hardly any move back. Those that do have to because of our moronic visa system or move to Boston, Seattle, or New York. They are almost all hiring, and they manage to find good people (not without a good amount of effort), if they can't afford offices they work out of their living rooms and that's just fine, they don't travel during rush hour so traffic is a non-issue, and if past performance is any indication of future results (which may not be true, is that what you're arguing?) they will make up a disproportionately large portion of the successful (in the admittedly uniquely SV sense) tech companies of the next few years.