7 ms·

Is It Sunday Already? Seems Like Only Yesterday It Was Saturday

25 points by znmeb 16y ago

techiferous 16y ago
Well then, head on over to Boston. The startup scene is hot here and it's a fun city.
- znmeb 16y ago
  Funny you should mention Boston. Paul Graham used to say there were three places to start a company - Cambridge / MIT / Harvard, Berkeley / UC Berkeley, and Palo Alto / Stanford. And he commuted between Boston and Silicon Valley. Then he decided Boston was not a good place to raise a child and moved full-time to Silicon Valley. It's written up somewhere on his blog - I don't have the link handy. I don't know much about Boston these days, but in the early 1980s when I used to call on DSP folk with Floating Point Systems, it seemed vibrant. And the food was a lot better than anything I've ever had in Silicon Valley. ;-)
danilocampos 16y ago
It's thin reasoning. Does Silicon Valley have dilettantes like Sarah Lacey? Sure. But these people are everywhere. Does it have figures whose estimation of their own importance is over-inflated? Absolutely. Again, they're everywhere. Can you find some events here that cost more than the value they'll provide to the median attendee? ... You get the pattern. The thrust could have more profitably culminated in "TechCrunch is the last place I'd go for information on the Valley." This conclusion could be reasonably supported by the argument. I still wouldn't altogether buy it, but it wouldn't be crazy. I'm just not sure you can write off an entire region because of the behavior of one publication. As a Valley transplant, the value I see for founding a business here is tremendous: A huge pool of extraordinarily talented technical professionals. Bigger, perhaps, than anywhere else. It's about people. And it doesn't stop with having fellow hackers. You'll discover investors, of course, plus a lot of senior people who can give you good advice from their hard-won experience. There are people who annoy you in the Valley - big deal. Speaking from experience, I'd rather have bickering neighbors like Arrington, Dave McClure and Ron Conway instead of, for example, the kind of people who cherish a certain skin color, superstition, and pickup trucks. For me, it's a culture thing. And it's priceless.
- holychiz 16y ago
  I second this, and go a little further...stop reading TechCrunch. It jumped the shark awhile ago.
- SamAtt 16y ago
  It's beyond thin. Every VC environment has loud personalities and personal conflict between various groups. Whether it's the Valley or Chicago you're going to have these types of stories. So to condemn the valley based on those stories getting more press is silly. It shows the author lives in a bubble and has never experienced what it's like to really raise money in such an environment. Worse though is how high this got. The fact that this made it to #1 on HN actually makes me a little queasy. I don't tend to pay attention to all the HN is degrading talk but this makes me wonder
ryanwaggoner 16y ago
We've been treated to a post by Sarah Lacy blaming teachers' unions for the "Why Our Schools Suck" Granted, Lacy might not be the best person to listen to about this, but I have yet to hear a better explanation for why public schools can't seem to get their act together.
- jlgbecom 16y ago
  I have yet to hear a better explanation for why public schools can't seem to get their act together. Unequal funding based on property taxes further penalizes the lower classes. The wealthiest go to posh private schools, the upper-middle classes have public schools with greenhouses and olympic size swimming pools, most everyone else has outdated textbooks and low salaries, and the lower classes have lead paint and crumbling infrastructure. The result is that, averaged out, we have terrible results. Mostly because there's only so much you can do with money, so the wealthiest who have access to a surplus of funding can only do so much to balance out the disadvantages of the rest. An equalized system would produce much better results for the country. This is how Finland and other social democracies operate.
  - ryanwaggoner 16y ago
    Unequal funding based on property taxes further penalizes the lower classes. The wealthiest go to posh private schools, the upper-middle classes have public schools with greenhouses and olympic size swimming pools, most everyone else has outdated textbooks and low salaries, and the lower classes have lead paint and crumbling infrastructure. And yet, there are schools attended by the "lower classes" with much higher funding levels than private schools who rank as some of the worst in the nation. According to a 2007 article in The Washington Post, the Washington D.C. public school district spends $12,979 per student per year. This is the third highest level of funding per student out of the 100 biggest school districts in the U.S. Despite this high level of funding, the school district has produced outcomes that are lower than the national average. In reading and math, the district's students score the lowest among 11 major school districts – even when poor children are compared with other poor children. 33% of poor fourth graders in the U.S. lack basic skills in math, but in Washington D.C., it's 62%. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_United_States#Funding_for_K-12_schools http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_United_States#...
jlgbecom 16y ago
I like that there are perspectives that question the Silicon Valley approach to start-ups. Although of course there's definitely good to come out of it, there's also an extraordinary amount of ego and hype. Some might argue more than there is good. I'd prefer to see people focus on building entrepreneurship in other cities, as well as experimenting with alternative forms of business structures (non-profits, cooperatives, etc), for those who are really adventurous. There doesn't have to be a one-size-fits-all track for creating a new technology, and a diversified tech economy is a healthy one.
- znmeb 16y ago
  I could buy that argument if people in the Valley weren't so harsh to founders from other parts of the world and so adamant that the people there were "better" in some significant way than, say, my home town of PDX. I've heard a number of stories of businesses that were told to move their HQ to Silicon Valley. That's a big part of why I wrote what I wrote - Angelgate was just the crowning example of arrogance and viciousness that seems to inhabit Silicon Valley.
bosch 16y ago
A lot of good points are made in this article including the main one of doesn't this all serve Arrington's #1 interest (himself) in the end?
jrockway 16y ago
Uh, what? At least the Hitler video was funny.
- znmeb 16y ago
  Well - maybe it was, but it was created by Kakigarden, not Techcrunch.
siglesias 16y ago
It's unfortunate that the ethos of TechCrunch's reporting is founded on Arrigonton's bizarre disregard for sober, non-sensationalist journalism. It leads to wildly variant levels of quality in the posts, both in terms of objectivity and insight.
spacecadet 16y ago
I had never read Techcrunch before "anglegate" was posted here, and I wont ever read it again. Never liked the reporting style.
- kjksf 16y ago
  I've you've never read Techcrunch before, how did you form an opinion about their reporting style?
  - spacecadet 16y ago
    Sorry worded that funny, I didn't mean never like absolute never. I did read a few posts early on and wasnt enthralled enough to continue, and so it felt like never as of last week. You know never like formatting without zeroing out data? ;p
rblion 16y ago
SV is one of the only places on Earth where dreamers, hackers, and backers all gather to make big things happen. My only thing is, why not apply more of our joint efforts to solve critical survival problems for all human beings and our only home planet? It's already happening at some degree but, as evolving beings, we must keep raising the bar. Maybe more people need to trip on LSD before starting up...
damien_hoffman 16y ago
The Valley has already created a positive feedback loop for attracting high quality VCs and entrepreneurs. Therefore, like those who go to LA to seek Silver Screen fame, SV will be hard to replace as THE place to be for tech startups. With that said, ironically technology is draining the moat around SV and offering great opportunities to other world-class startup cities (e.g., NYC, Boston, Austin, Raleigh-Durham, etc.). In 50-100 years I expect these cities and a few more to have equal resources ala capital, technology, experienced operators, and top tier entrepreneurs. IMHO, this is one of the ways the US will get its swagger back ;)

25 points by znmeb 16y ago

techiferous 16y ago

Well then, head on over to Boston. The startup scene is hot here and it's a fun city.

znmeb 16y ago
Funny you should mention Boston. Paul Graham used to say there were three places to start a company - Cambridge / MIT / Harvard, Berkeley / UC Berkeley, and Palo Alto / Stanford. And he commuted between Boston and Silicon Valley. Then he decided Boston was not a good place to raise a child and moved full-time to Silicon Valley. It's written up somewhere on his blog - I don't have the link handy. I don't know much about Boston these days, but in the early 1980s when I used to call on DSP folk with Floating Point Systems, it seemed vibrant. And the food was a lot better than anything I've ever had in Silicon Valley. ;-)

danilocampos 16y ago

It's thin reasoning. Does Silicon Valley have dilettantes like Sarah Lacey? Sure. But these people are everywhere. Does it have figures whose estimation of their own importance is over-inflated? Absolutely. Again, they're everywhere. Can you find some events here that cost more than the value they'll provide to the median attendee? ... You get the pattern. The thrust could have more profitably culminated in "TechCrunch is the last place I'd go for information on the Valley." This conclusion could be reasonably supported by the argument. I still wouldn't altogether buy it, but it wouldn't be crazy. I'm just not sure you can write off an entire region because of the behavior of one publication. As a Valley transplant, the value I see for founding a business here is tremendous: A huge pool of extraordinarily talented technical professionals. Bigger, perhaps, than anywhere else. It's about people. And it doesn't stop with having fellow hackers. You'll discover investors, of course, plus a lot of senior people who can give you good advice from their hard-won experience. There are people who annoy you in the Valley - big deal. Speaking from experience, I'd rather have bickering neighbors like Arrington, Dave McClure and Ron Conway instead of, for example, the kind of people who cherish a certain skin color, superstition, and pickup trucks. For me, it's a culture thing. And it's priceless.

holychiz 16y ago
I second this, and go a little further...stop reading TechCrunch. It jumped the shark awhile ago.
SamAtt 16y ago
It's beyond thin. Every VC environment has loud personalities and personal conflict between various groups. Whether it's the Valley or Chicago you're going to have these types of stories. So to condemn the valley based on those stories getting more press is silly. It shows the author lives in a bubble and has never experienced what it's like to really raise money in such an environment. Worse though is how high this got. The fact that this made it to #1 on HN actually makes me a little queasy. I don't tend to pay attention to all the HN is degrading talk but this makes me wonder

ryanwaggoner 16y ago

We've been treated to a post by Sarah Lacy blaming teachers' unions for the "Why Our Schools Suck" Granted, Lacy might not be the best person to listen to about this, but I have yet to hear a better explanation for why public schools can't seem to get their act together.

jlgbecom 16y ago
I have yet to hear a better explanation for why public schools can't seem to get their act together. Unequal funding based on property taxes further penalizes the lower classes. The wealthiest go to posh private schools, the upper-middle classes have public schools with greenhouses and olympic size swimming pools, most everyone else has outdated textbooks and low salaries, and the lower classes have lead paint and crumbling infrastructure. The result is that, averaged out, we have terrible results. Mostly because there's only so much you can do with money, so the wealthiest who have access to a surplus of funding can only do so much to balance out the disadvantages of the rest. An equalized system would produce much better results for the country. This is how Finland and other social democracies operate.
- ryanwaggoner 16y ago
  Unequal funding based on property taxes further penalizes the lower classes. The wealthiest go to posh private schools, the upper-middle classes have public schools with greenhouses and olympic size swimming pools, most everyone else has outdated textbooks and low salaries, and the lower classes have lead paint and crumbling infrastructure. And yet, there are schools attended by the "lower classes" with much higher funding levels than private schools who rank as some of the worst in the nation. According to a 2007 article in The Washington Post, the Washington D.C. public school district spends $12,979 per student per year. This is the third highest level of funding per student out of the 100 biggest school districts in the U.S. Despite this high level of funding, the school district has produced outcomes that are lower than the national average. In reading and math, the district's students score the lowest among 11 major school districts – even when poor children are compared with other poor children. 33% of poor fourth graders in the U.S. lack basic skills in math, but in Washington D.C., it's 62%. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_United_States#Funding_for_K-12_schools http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_United_States#...

jlgbecom 16y ago

I like that there are perspectives that question the Silicon Valley approach to start-ups. Although of course there's definitely good to come out of it, there's also an extraordinary amount of ego and hype. Some might argue more than there is good. I'd prefer to see people focus on building entrepreneurship in other cities, as well as experimenting with alternative forms of business structures (non-profits, cooperatives, etc), for those who are really adventurous. There doesn't have to be a one-size-fits-all track for creating a new technology, and a diversified tech economy is a healthy one.

znmeb 16y ago
I could buy that argument if people in the Valley weren't so harsh to founders from other parts of the world and so adamant that the people there were "better" in some significant way than, say, my home town of PDX. I've heard a number of stories of businesses that were told to move their HQ to Silicon Valley. That's a big part of why I wrote what I wrote - Angelgate was just the crowning example of arrogance and viciousness that seems to inhabit Silicon Valley.

bosch 16y ago

A lot of good points are made in this article including the main one of doesn't this all serve Arrington's #1 interest (himself) in the end?

jrockway 16y ago

Uh, what? At least the Hitler video was funny.

znmeb 16y ago
Well - maybe it was, but it was created by Kakigarden, not Techcrunch.

siglesias 16y ago

It's unfortunate that the ethos of TechCrunch's reporting is founded on Arrigonton's bizarre disregard for sober, non-sensationalist journalism. It leads to wildly variant levels of quality in the posts, both in terms of objectivity and insight.

spacecadet 16y ago

I had never read Techcrunch before "anglegate" was posted here, and I wont ever read it again. Never liked the reporting style.

kjksf 16y ago
I've you've never read Techcrunch before, how did you form an opinion about their reporting style?
- spacecadet 16y ago
  Sorry worded that funny, I didn't mean never like absolute never. I did read a few posts early on and wasnt enthralled enough to continue, and so it felt like never as of last week. You know never like formatting without zeroing out data? ;p

rblion 16y ago

SV is one of the only places on Earth where dreamers, hackers, and backers all gather to make big things happen. My only thing is, why not apply more of our joint efforts to solve critical survival problems for all human beings and our only home planet? It's already happening at some degree but, as evolving beings, we must keep raising the bar. Maybe more people need to trip on LSD before starting up...

damien_hoffman 16y ago

The Valley has already created a positive feedback loop for attracting high quality VCs and entrepreneurs. Therefore, like those who go to LA to seek Silver Screen fame, SV will be hard to replace as THE place to be for tech startups. With that said, ironically technology is draining the moat around SV and offering great opportunities to other world-class startup cities (e.g., NYC, Boston, Austin, Raleigh-Durham, etc.). In 50-100 years I expect these cities and a few more to have equal resources ala capital, technology, experienced operators, and top tier entrepreneurs. IMHO, this is one of the ways the US will get its swagger back ;)