4 ms·

Yes, it's like what's going to be the next craigslist. Craiglist has unbelievable traction, just as Silicon Valley. If you want to be the next Silicon Valley

Yes, it's like what's going to be the next craigslist. Craiglist has unbelievable traction, just as Silicon Valley. If you want to be the next Silicon Valley or even 1/10th of its quality, it requires at least 20 years of work.

synaesthesisx 9y ago
I would disagree - as someone from Cambridge/Boston that frequents SF I would say Silicon Valley isn't all it's hyped to be. The majority of startups I come across out there are simply looking to get rich quick and are in it for the game rather than actually innovating anything. When it comes to actual innovation I have yet to find anything comes close to the level Cambridge/Boston is on, especially in life sciences & AI. If only it weren't for the frigid winters... https://www.bizjournals.com/boston/blog/startups/2017/10/boston-is-no-1-in-the-country-for-startups-again.html https://www.bizjournals.com/boston/blog/startups/2017/10/bos...
- ng12 9y ago
  As someone who would love to move back to Boston that's a very hard sell. Especially when the biggest success story is Hubspot (of "Disrupted" fame) which is more Silicon Valley than Silicon Valley is.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    A lot of perception is flavored by the fact that a lot of the time "tech" gets defined as what dominates Silicon Valley. So you get taxi companies counted as tech and bio/pharma or fintech often not. That said, while California does have a lot more VC funding, New York and Massachusetts and #2 and #3 even though Boston/Cambridge in particular tend to not be mentioned in these kind of discussions. https://ssti.org/blog/useful-stats-venture-capital-dollars-and-deals-state-2010-2015 https://ssti.org/blog/useful-stats-venture-capital-dollars-a...
  - drharby 9y ago
    The fact that hubspot is the premeir success startup in boston signals to me the journey BOS has to go to compete with sv. That said tho, the cambridge intellectual bubble is real and has its advantages
- nostrademons 9y ago
  Also a Boston native that's moved to Silicon Valley. The rule of thumb I've seen is that technologies are invented in Boston and commercialized out West (either in SV or Seattle). Microsoft, Facebook, Reddit, YCombinator, and DropBox are all Boston startups...but you wouldn't know it unless you're intimately familiar with their histories. This has a lot to do with the business cultures of the respective places. When I was working in Boston, the message I got was "Work hard for 30 years, build up expertise, and then maybe you can get a VC to fund your startup - but only if it's in an industry where you know who your customers are and how to make money!" And then Google came calling and was like "Wanna help us redesign the search results page?", and I saw many of my colleagues leave and successfully found startups, and folks here are like "Got an idea? Just go quit and start working on it, and if it turns out to be worth anything funding will be available." I'd say that Boston understands technology better than Silicon Valley, but aren't very savvy about how to apply it for maximum impact. In Boston, people really really want to be smart, and thorough, and innovative, and fully explore all the implications of what they're doing before they bring it to market. In Silicon Valley, people are like "You know a tiny bit more about something than somebody somewhere else? Great, bring it to market, listen to feedback, and then go hire some smart MIT grads to work out the details." The market seems to reward the latter approach much better. Silicon Valley's internalized the counterintuitive market maxim of "It's better to be differentiated than good", while Boston is still hung up on being good.
  - wellboy 9y ago
    That's a goos point. However, not sure how one would compare Boston to SV then. It seems like Boston has a few good unis, which SV also has. So, the number of good ideas that come out of it are maybe equal, but all of the rest (which is 95%) that comes after, is 100x better in SV, no?

synaesthesisx 9y ago

I would disagree - as someone from Cambridge/Boston that frequents SF I would say Silicon Valley isn't all it's hyped to be. The majority of startups I come across out there are simply looking to get rich quick and are in it for the game rather than actually innovating anything. When it comes to actual innovation I have yet to find anything comes close to the level Cambridge/Boston is on, especially in life sciences & AI. If only it weren't for the frigid winters... https://www.bizjournals.com/boston/blog/startups/2017/10/boston-is-no-1-in-the-country-for-startups-again.html https://www.bizjournals.com/boston/blog/startups/2017/10/bos...

ng12 9y ago
As someone who would love to move back to Boston that's a very hard sell. Especially when the biggest success story is Hubspot (of "Disrupted" fame) which is more Silicon Valley than Silicon Valley is.
- ghaff 9y ago
  A lot of perception is flavored by the fact that a lot of the time "tech" gets defined as what dominates Silicon Valley. So you get taxi companies counted as tech and bio/pharma or fintech often not. That said, while California does have a lot more VC funding, New York and Massachusetts and #2 and #3 even though Boston/Cambridge in particular tend to not be mentioned in these kind of discussions. https://ssti.org/blog/useful-stats-venture-capital-dollars-and-deals-state-2010-2015 https://ssti.org/blog/useful-stats-venture-capital-dollars-a...
- drharby 9y ago
  The fact that hubspot is the premeir success startup in boston signals to me the journey BOS has to go to compete with sv. That said tho, the cambridge intellectual bubble is real and has its advantages
nostrademons 9y ago
Also a Boston native that's moved to Silicon Valley. The rule of thumb I've seen is that technologies are invented in Boston and commercialized out West (either in SV or Seattle). Microsoft, Facebook, Reddit, YCombinator, and DropBox are all Boston startups...but you wouldn't know it unless you're intimately familiar with their histories. This has a lot to do with the business cultures of the respective places. When I was working in Boston, the message I got was "Work hard for 30 years, build up expertise, and then maybe you can get a VC to fund your startup - but only if it's in an industry where you know who your customers are and how to make money!" And then Google came calling and was like "Wanna help us redesign the search results page?", and I saw many of my colleagues leave and successfully found startups, and folks here are like "Got an idea? Just go quit and start working on it, and if it turns out to be worth anything funding will be available." I'd say that Boston understands technology better than Silicon Valley, but aren't very savvy about how to apply it for maximum impact. In Boston, people really really want to be smart, and thorough, and innovative, and fully explore all the implications of what they're doing before they bring it to market. In Silicon Valley, people are like "You know a tiny bit more about something than somebody somewhere else? Great, bring it to market, listen to feedback, and then go hire some smart MIT grads to work out the details." The market seems to reward the latter approach much better. Silicon Valley's internalized the counterintuitive market maxim of "It's better to be differentiated than good", while Boston is still hung up on being good.
- wellboy 9y ago
  That's a goos point. However, not sure how one would compare Boston to SV then. It seems like Boston has a few good unis, which SV also has. So, the number of good ideas that come out of it are maybe equal, but all of the rest (which is 95%) that comes after, is 100x better in SV, no?