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YC Partner AMA at the Female Founders Conference

1 points by ryanmercer 8y ago

ryanmercer 8y ago
>One thing I’ll add to that is that I meet a lot of founders all over the world, and at this point in time, I still think it’s helpful for any founder form anywhere to spend, you know, three months in the Bay Area, and get to build that network. There’s such, so many investors there, so many other founders, and you can stay there for that amount of time, and then theoretically if this is where, if New York is where your customers are, you move that to New York. But um, at this point, it is still so much easier to raise up and build that network there, so even spending a short amount of time, I think still helps. -- I hate this. Not the comment but the fact it is a reality. It reminds me of what old-school FedEx employees will say "Wanna move up ya gotta move to Mecca (Memphis)". I get that the investors live there but argh! You have all of these companies, all of this talent, all of this money in a cramped city on the coast. Then of course you have the conditions. I visited San Francisco a few weeks ago for the first time in my life. Within the first hour of leaving SFO and heading to downtown I saw a completely naked man in what I judge to be his 60's just walking down the street with a bag and his sandals going about his day without a care in the world. I've never seen someone layhing on a sidewalk before, in the uber from SFO until the time I walked into The Proper I saw now less than 20 (I stopped counting) people in various states of alertness laying on sidewalks. Around hour 20 I witnessed a woman walk exactly one step out of her tent and within 10 seconds as I was walking down the sidewalk up to a building defecate immediately in front of her tent and pop right back inside. I hate that the general attitude, and reality, is that if you want to work in tech or get traction and funding for your startup, you essentially have to relocate to the Bay Area. We need this to change. Even if it's just having a coalition of VC types get together and say "look, let's pick 5 cities spread across the country. We'll agree that we will send representatives from our firms to these cities for invite-only conferences where we meet with startups/companies that satisfy some application requirements with the stipulation the city we meet them to must be the closest to their company" and then inconvenience themselves for 3 days a quarter to go out and meet people. I find it idiotic that we want to concentrate everything in a geographically small city, with rampant homelessness, in earthquake country, that frequently has airport delays, where it takes 15 minutes to drive 2-3 miles, that literally smells like a portapotty because of all the public urination and defecation. Boggles my mind. Being there for 2 days and change was the most surreal experience I've ever had in my life.

1 points by ryanmercer 8y ago

>One thing I’ll add to that is that I meet a lot of founders all over the world, and at this point in time, I still think it’s helpful for any founder form anywhere to spend, you know, three months in the Bay Area, and get to build that network. There’s such, so many investors there, so many other founders, and you can stay there for that amount of time, and then theoretically if this is where, if New York is where your customers are, you move that to New York. But um, at this point, it is still so much easier to raise up and build that network there, so even spending a short amount of time, I think still helps. -- I hate this. Not the comment but the fact it is a reality. It reminds me of what old-school FedEx employees will say "Wanna move up ya gotta move to Mecca (Memphis)". I get that the investors live there but argh! You have all of these companies, all of this talent, all of this money in a cramped city on the coast. Then of course you have the conditions. I visited San Francisco a few weeks ago for the first time in my life. Within the first hour of leaving SFO and heading to downtown I saw a completely naked man in what I judge to be his 60's just walking down the street with a bag and his sandals going about his day without a care in the world. I've never seen someone layhing on a sidewalk before, in the uber from SFO until the time I walked into The Proper I saw now less than 20 (I stopped counting) people in various states of alertness laying on sidewalks. Around hour 20 I witnessed a woman walk exactly one step out of her tent and within 10 seconds as I was walking down the sidewalk up to a building defecate immediately in front of her tent and pop right back inside. I hate that the general attitude, and reality, is that if you want to work in tech or get traction and funding for your startup, you essentially have to relocate to the Bay Area. We need this to change. Even if it's just having a coalition of VC types get together and say "look, let's pick 5 cities spread across the country. We'll agree that we will send representatives from our firms to these cities for invite-only conferences where we meet with startups/companies that satisfy some application requirements with the stipulation the city we meet them to must be the closest to their company" and then inconvenience themselves for 3 days a quarter to go out and meet people. I find it idiotic that we want to concentrate everything in a geographically small city, with rampant homelessness, in earthquake country, that frequently has airport delays, where it takes 15 minutes to drive 2-3 miles, that literally smells like a portapotty because of all the public urination and defecation. Boggles my mind. Being there for 2 days and change was the most surreal experience I've ever had in my life.