The Valley Versus the Mountain (Silicon or Seattle?)

This is one of the reasons I like Tech Crunch; Mike’s personality gets to show through. In this case he’s defending Silicon Valley in a discussion about whether or not Seattle is as good as Silicon Valley. Mike’s arguments can be summed up in the old Ebb song: “If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere” And sure, Silicon Valley has the most potent collection of ideas among anyone in the world. In the Valley you can live, eat, breath and sleep the web world. So if you want to change the world, Silicon Valley is a great place to do it. But you can still do it in Seattle and in some ways I think you have to work harder because you won’t be as surrounded by the startup world as you would be in Silicon Valley.

We’ve got some great things here in Seattle to help startups succeed. There are distractions, sure. Skiing, hiking, sailing, etc, but the tech community in Seattle is supportive and active. We’ve got events like Ignite that help bring together the tech community and the competitive spirit is more likely to get people to help you than try to sabotage you. The kind of people you’ll work with here in Seattle will help make sure that your company is well rounded and has some perspective. All of the good things about Seattle including the outdoor culture and the Pacific Northwest culture will be embedded into your company. I think those things are great for a company in the long run. Look what Amazon has done with S3. We also benefit from a larger tech community that includes Boeing, a ship building industry and companies like Cascade Designs who push technology in the outdoors. Being able to pull ideas from all of those sources is a huge benefit for startups or any company.

The Valley is great and Mike’s right, if you’re a couple of kids in the Valley you can do great things. But Seattle isn’t all that different and I think the end result will be more fulfilling and more interesting in the end. And Scoble, it’s the other way around. We’re 2 hours from the Valley.

[tags]Seattle, Startups, Silicon Valley[/tags]

http://polyGeek.com polyGeek

I don’t disagree with you. If you’re looking for a high population density of talent – developers, designers, marketing, accountants, etc. – to bring into a startup then Silicon Valley is probably at the top of the list. Followed closely by London and New York. I’d wager that SoCal beats out Seattle by a wide margin for those resources although density becomes an issue in an area that is as spread out as it is here in SoCal.

Another consideration for where to begin a startup is the proximity to venture capitalists. I know that at the startup I was at – Smilebox – our CEO was traveling a LOT during the funding stage. If you’re more proximal to the VCs then you don’t have to spend nearly as much time in airports being unproductive.

Ultimately I think the best strategy for a startup is to rely on telecommuting. Otherwise the success of your venture is limited to the talent you can procure in your area. And getting talented people on board is going to be much more difficult than getting funding.

I’m working for two startups now and neither one is remotely within commuting range of where I live. That’s the way to go.
http://www.simplifiedchaos.com Todd

How quickly everyone forgets about the bubble bust of 2000 in The Valley. Techies couldn’t get jobs. All the fancy billboards went away. And that was only 7ish years ago.

I guess most techie coders participating in Web 2.0 are probably young enough not to have experienced this.
http://www.bluefire.tv Patrick

Yes, but the bust of 2000 hit Seattle hard too, and most of us that were so easily employed building up Seattle-based dot coms (of which there were hundreds) were out of work too.

Seattle is really just a smaller Silicon North imo -with Microsoft supplying a lot of direct and tangential employment along with a host of other high-techs also providing gainful employment.

Ryan Stewart – Mountaineer Coding

Just an average guy trying to drink above average beer.