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There's just too much noise there, too much "flavor of the month." I often hear people make this (in my opinion rather facile) criticism of SV, but as far as I
by pg 16y ago
There's just too much noise there, too much "flavor of the month."
I often hear people make this (in my opinion rather facile) criticism of SV, but as far as I can remember I've never heard anyone give any evidence of it.
I've seen thousands of data points about this over the last 5 years, and I have seen no evidence of it. The startup ideas submitted by YC applicants from outside the Bay Area are no less likely (in fact probably more likely) to be derivative than the ones from people who live here.
- starkfist 16y agoThere is a sideshow of nightly drunken mixers and panels and meetups and conferences and such. If you attend these you will meet hundreds of loser "CEOs" with idiotic derivative ideas. Most engineers and founders avoid this, but Digg was one of main promoters of this nonsense, which probably colored ojbyrne's experience.
- ojbyrne 16y agoAccidental downvote, sorry. It may be more SF-centric than valley-centric. My experience at digg did prompt me to network somewhat, so indirectly, you're probably correct.
- Harj 16y agoI agree with this. I'm particularly exposed to seeing how founders/CEO's differ within YC and at these mixer/networking events - the generic "location based recommendation something" ideas are talked about at the latter rather than the former.
- JoeAltmaier 16y ago99% of everything is crap. Including startup ideas. Its hard to get statistics from personal experience.
- nitrogen 16y agoWhile I would weigh pg's personal startup idea experience higher than the average person's, it is possible that, because YC deals with some of the "best of the best" in startups, his experience might suggest there are more good ideas than there really are (and the not-so-good ideas just don't apply to YC).
- JoeAltmaier 16y agoThat assumes pg does better than average at choosing startups. I agree, he SEES a lot more than most folks.