4 ms·

Could you outline the exact reasoning why YC still believes SV is the place to be for a startup. I've never heard any explanation that went deeper than "well in

by kriro 10y ago

Could you outline the exact reasoning why YC still believes SV is the place to be for a startup. I've never heard any explanation that went deeper than "well investors are there and network duh" It seems very broken that IT specifically should be bound to a physical place. Are there any plans to innovate in this regard or any research YC is doing?

coralreef 10y ago
http://www.paulgraham.com/hubs.html http://www.paulgraham.com/hubs.html
- kriro 10y ago
  That's the article I had in the back of my head. I think it might be a good time to reassess some of the ideas from the article (it is 5 years old after all). """being in a place where startups are the cool thing to do, and chance meetings with people who can help you""" I think "the cool thing to do" isn't as relevant as it was 5 years ago due to some well publicized success stories and things like the shark tank etc. Startups are generally considered a more viable career option these days so that need (and thus the competitive advantage of SV) is quite a bit less than 5 years ago (imo) Chance meetings...yeah I get it. It's also lessened to some degree due to social media and random chance on the internet (someone reading a tweet of yours and knowing how to help, help on HN/reddit etc.) but that's still a great point in favor of SV. It's also self-reenforcing. So for arguments sake I'll offer the counter position to "move to a startup hub" namely "move to a place where you expect the highest density of your customers" (which should help with chance meetings as well) The second alternative I'll suggest is...stay at a place you feel comfortable at especially if it has low living cost until you are ramen profitable given SV cost structures...then move. [there's a lot of it depends here but those are just suggestions to kickstart a hopefully interesting discussion]
  - jasode 10y ago
    >I'll offer the counter position to "move to a startup hub" namely "move to a place where you expect the highest density of your customers" (which should help with chance meetings as well) Based on empirical history of how successful startups have turned into $1 billion companies, it looks like the density & quantity of the hiring pool and investors are higher priorities than location of customers. In SV, you get a pipeline of fresh Stanford grads and also the ex-employees from Apple/Google/Facebook/etc. For investors, you have a bunch of them clustered on Sand Hill Rd. For B2C consumer facing internet businesses, there are no geographically concentrated customers to move to. The prioritization of proximity close to the customers may make more sense for a lifestyle business[1]. E.g. you're developing a SaaS cloud service for surfing shops to manage their inventory of surfboard gear. In that case, it might make more sense to locate the headquarters in San Diego and it's a calculated tradeoff to rely on the smaller pool of programmers in that area. The startup CEO physically visits each surfing shop to see how the software is used and gets real feedback for new features. Investors would also be less of an issue because a lot of lifestyle businesses are bootstrapped to profitability. That said, YC and VCs don't invest in lifestyle businesses so their bias towards SV wouldn't apply. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifestyle_business https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifestyle_business
martincmartin 10y ago
They used to be in both Cambridge and California, when they moved to CA only PG wrote this: http://old.ycombinator.com/ycca.html http://old.ycombinator.com/ycca.html
- bbctol 10y ago
  I'm a little surprised at the mentions of it being a better place to raise kids. Admittedly, I'm not as familiar with Palo Alto, but I think of the suburbs of Boston as an extraordinarily good place to raise children.
pritambarhate 10y ago
This is discussed in the book "The Industries of the Future" by Alec Ross. He asks a question: Why can not other countries replicate SV? The short version is accumulation of know-how in that geographic region. For years, most of the brilliant minds in the tech domain from all over the world have gone to SV to collaborate together. So even if another country creates a replication of SV in terms of infrastructure (or even gives tax breaks and other incentives), it's hard to recreate the huge pool of bright professionals who have years of know-how to tackle startup related challenges.
- djb_hackernews 10y ago
  I didn't read the book but that is entirely too simplistic and comes across as american exceptionalism to me. Not to mention the author has a well defined political agenda to sell I don't necessarily agree with. I've lived all over the country and all over the world and between countries I'd say it is 100% cultural. In "europe" employee protection laws make it difficult to quickly hire and fire employees, making it difficult to scale. In Chile failure was shameful. A stable bureaucratic government job was the most coveted job. In Japan you are a social outcast if you aren't a company man. I found quite a bit of entrepreneurial effort in west Africa, however I think that area lacks the required infrastructure to support large scale innovation. I don't buy the concentration argument within the US borders. The bay area has a population of 7M, the greater NYC area has a population of 20M. Purely based on population numbers it is difficult to believe the bay area has a higher concentration of educated people.
  - metamet 10y ago
    > Purely based on population numbers it is difficult to believe the bay area has a higher concentration of educated people. At this point, I don't think it's arguing that. There's a critical mass of domain specific professionals in SV, pure and simple. The argument is that if anyone wants to create a competitor to SV, they'd be playing catch up because there is already an established core in SV. You'd need to peel away a large number of folks already established there before that concentration is no longer as strong as it currently is. There's a limited number of experts in the world. Wherever has the highest concentration is going to have an innate advantage in terms of appeal, regardless of cost, etc. Creating an affordable alternative elsewhere can't compete on that level.

by kriro 10y ago

coralreef 10y ago

http://www.paulgraham.com/hubs.html http://www.paulgraham.com/hubs.html

kriro 10y ago
That's the article I had in the back of my head. I think it might be a good time to reassess some of the ideas from the article (it is 5 years old after all). """being in a place where startups are the cool thing to do, and chance meetings with people who can help you""" I think "the cool thing to do" isn't as relevant as it was 5 years ago due to some well publicized success stories and things like the shark tank etc. Startups are generally considered a more viable career option these days so that need (and thus the competitive advantage of SV) is quite a bit less than 5 years ago (imo) Chance meetings...yeah I get it. It's also lessened to some degree due to social media and random chance on the internet (someone reading a tweet of yours and knowing how to help, help on HN/reddit etc.) but that's still a great point in favor of SV. It's also self-reenforcing. So for arguments sake I'll offer the counter position to "move to a startup hub" namely "move to a place where you expect the highest density of your customers" (which should help with chance meetings as well) The second alternative I'll suggest is...stay at a place you feel comfortable at especially if it has low living cost until you are ramen profitable given SV cost structures...then move. [there's a lot of it depends here but those are just suggestions to kickstart a hopefully interesting discussion]
- jasode 10y ago
  >I'll offer the counter position to "move to a startup hub" namely "move to a place where you expect the highest density of your customers" (which should help with chance meetings as well) Based on empirical history of how successful startups have turned into $1 billion companies, it looks like the density & quantity of the hiring pool and investors are higher priorities than location of customers. In SV, you get a pipeline of fresh Stanford grads and also the ex-employees from Apple/Google/Facebook/etc. For investors, you have a bunch of them clustered on Sand Hill Rd. For B2C consumer facing internet businesses, there are no geographically concentrated customers to move to. The prioritization of proximity close to the customers may make more sense for a lifestyle business[1]. E.g. you're developing a SaaS cloud service for surfing shops to manage their inventory of surfboard gear. In that case, it might make more sense to locate the headquarters in San Diego and it's a calculated tradeoff to rely on the smaller pool of programmers in that area. The startup CEO physically visits each surfing shop to see how the software is used and gets real feedback for new features. Investors would also be less of an issue because a lot of lifestyle businesses are bootstrapped to profitability. That said, YC and VCs don't invest in lifestyle businesses so their bias towards SV wouldn't apply. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifestyle_business https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifestyle_business

martincmartin 10y ago

They used to be in both Cambridge and California, when they moved to CA only PG wrote this: http://old.ycombinator.com/ycca.html http://old.ycombinator.com/ycca.html

bbctol 10y ago
I'm a little surprised at the mentions of it being a better place to raise kids. Admittedly, I'm not as familiar with Palo Alto, but I think of the suburbs of Boston as an extraordinarily good place to raise children.

pritambarhate 10y ago

This is discussed in the book "The Industries of the Future" by Alec Ross. He asks a question: Why can not other countries replicate SV? The short version is accumulation of know-how in that geographic region. For years, most of the brilliant minds in the tech domain from all over the world have gone to SV to collaborate together. So even if another country creates a replication of SV in terms of infrastructure (or even gives tax breaks and other incentives), it's hard to recreate the huge pool of bright professionals who have years of know-how to tackle startup related challenges.

djb_hackernews 10y ago
I didn't read the book but that is entirely too simplistic and comes across as american exceptionalism to me. Not to mention the author has a well defined political agenda to sell I don't necessarily agree with. I've lived all over the country and all over the world and between countries I'd say it is 100% cultural. In "europe" employee protection laws make it difficult to quickly hire and fire employees, making it difficult to scale. In Chile failure was shameful. A stable bureaucratic government job was the most coveted job. In Japan you are a social outcast if you aren't a company man. I found quite a bit of entrepreneurial effort in west Africa, however I think that area lacks the required infrastructure to support large scale innovation. I don't buy the concentration argument within the US borders. The bay area has a population of 7M, the greater NYC area has a population of 20M. Purely based on population numbers it is difficult to believe the bay area has a higher concentration of educated people.
- metamet 10y ago
  > Purely based on population numbers it is difficult to believe the bay area has a higher concentration of educated people. At this point, I don't think it's arguing that. There's a critical mass of domain specific professionals in SV, pure and simple. The argument is that if anyone wants to create a competitor to SV, they'd be playing catch up because there is already an established core in SV. You'd need to peel away a large number of folks already established there before that concentration is no longer as strong as it currently is. There's a limited number of experts in the world. Wherever has the highest concentration is going to have an innate advantage in terms of appeal, regardless of cost, etc. Creating an affordable alternative elsewhere can't compete on that level.