3 ms·

That's kind of a weird take. The vast majority of startup funding happens in the SF bay area. It is true that YC wouldn't have worked in another city (they did

by mrkurt 6y ago

That's kind of a weird take. The vast majority of startup funding happens in the SF bay area. It is true that YC wouldn't have worked in another city (they did move it from Boston after all), but that's unrelated to PG and Jessica's efforts. If what you're doing is giving people credibility in an _existing_ investor ecosystem, you can't just ... create a new investor ecosystem somewhere else.

PaulHoule 6y ago
It's a problem. A big problem. If you look at "racism" and other forms of inequality that are intractable in the US and other countries you find it can understood in terms of "placism". (e.g. "busing" as an answer to school inequality and the resulting backlash; if minorities lived in as a diverse set of places as white people did in the US the Democrats would have 58+ seats in the Senate, etc.) Sam could prove me wrong by sending the PG/Jessica combo to another place (Fresno, LA, Las Vegas, Dublin, Edingburgh, ...) and have them accomplish something. People have been asking for this for years but we've always heard that it's not negotiable, YC is tied to a sacred patch of land, etc. Someone who shows that "sacred land is everything" by their behavior is going to inevitable sound disingenuous when they try to distill universal principles out of the YC experience.
- NateEag 6y ago
  It's about the community, not the land. I expect you could relocate PG and Jessica and have similar results. The trick is that you'd need to also transplant a huge social circle and startup-friendly infrastructure. Including unintuitive things like a large collection of small café and independent restaurant owners. Paul touched on this a bit in his writings on making cities into startup hubs: http://paulgraham.com/pgh.html http://paulgraham.com/pgh.html http://www.paulgraham.com/siliconvalley.html http://www.paulgraham.com/siliconvalley.html

by mrkurt 6y ago

PaulHoule 6y ago

It's a problem. A big problem. If you look at "racism" and other forms of inequality that are intractable in the US and other countries you find it can understood in terms of "placism". (e.g. "busing" as an answer to school inequality and the resulting backlash; if minorities lived in as a diverse set of places as white people did in the US the Democrats would have 58+ seats in the Senate, etc.) Sam could prove me wrong by sending the PG/Jessica combo to another place (Fresno, LA, Las Vegas, Dublin, Edingburgh, ...) and have them accomplish something. People have been asking for this for years but we've always heard that it's not negotiable, YC is tied to a sacred patch of land, etc. Someone who shows that "sacred land is everything" by their behavior is going to inevitable sound disingenuous when they try to distill universal principles out of the YC experience.

NateEag 6y ago
It's about the community, not the land. I expect you could relocate PG and Jessica and have similar results. The trick is that you'd need to also transplant a huge social circle and startup-friendly infrastructure. Including unintuitive things like a large collection of small café and independent restaurant owners. Paul touched on this a bit in his writings on making cities into startup hubs: http://paulgraham.com/pgh.html http://paulgraham.com/pgh.html http://www.paulgraham.com/siliconvalley.html http://www.paulgraham.com/siliconvalley.html