10 ms·

This list is misleading. over half are from the Ann Arbor area and a few are in California (and other states) with a few remote offices in Ann Arbor. They rea

by rick888 15y ago

This list is misleading. over half are from the Ann Arbor area and a few are in California (and other states) with a few remote offices in Ann Arbor. They really should be pushing for Ann Arbor to be a tech center, not Detroit.

Newmind 15y ago
There are a number of cities in the valley that all consider themselves the same community. I think this is the same sort of concept. The list appears to be based on where the companies were founded not where they currently have presence.
- jerf 15y ago
  I live in Brighton, 15 minutes north of Ann Arbor, where I work. No, we do not consider ourselves to be "just part of the same community". Detroit's "over there". Detroit does extend out past Detroit proper and there are municipalities where one might just say for convenience "I live in Detroit" to those from out-of-town even though the mailing address isn't Detroit, but there's a lot of not-Detroit less than an hour away. And as Detroit tanks, there's a lot more not-Detroit to be found. While Detroit has been trying to resurrect itself, to take just one for-instance, Ann Arbor has just gotten on with life, and slowly but surely the rest of the region is following. Even if Detroit becomes alive again it will be a while before it culturally dominates the area again, if it ever does. In terms of the sorts of things that might be of interest to Hacker News, there's not much point to resurrecting Detroit and to be honest I don't understand the HN obsession with Detroit. Just drive an hour west. What people don't seem to get is that it really is Detroit that is dead/dying; the Greater Metropolitan Not-Really-Detroit-Anymore area is getting on with it. I will not say thriving, because that isn't true, but only Detroit and the aforementioned absorbed municipalities are dying.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
    - jerf 15y ago
      "In terms of the sorts of things that might be of interest to Hacker News, there's not much point to resurrecting Detroit..." Kindly don't chop important words off of quotes, please. It was never a startup hub, it was never a computer programming tech hub, it was full of the sort of Suits that that startup culture is in large part a reaction against, it is bizarre to insist on trying to turn Detroit into some sort of startup hub when there's one radically further along and tied to a world-class University just an hour west. If you want to resurrect it because it's your home, or because you feel for the people who live there, or because you have other interests that are relevant, go nuts. But I don't get Hacker New's obsession with the topic. A few articles about a case study of a modern city in major decline is interesting from a sociology perspective, but it gets a lot more attention than I'd expect from that.
    - philwelch 15y ago
      Cities have risen and fallen before. Part of the creative destruction of the last few decades involved wealth and power disappearing from Detroit and growing in Silicon Valley. I understand for Detroiters the sentimental value of Detroit, but there's no need for economic activity to happen in Detroit or in any other particular place so long as it happens and happens productively. In fact, it may be against this country's interests for otherwise useful and productive resources to be misdirected towards trying to rebuild failed cities like Detroit when they could be more productively invested elsewhere. People see a city like Detroit turn to ruins and think this is terrible, this needs to be a thriving city again. No, really as long as we have more prosperity elsewhere, Detroit can stay in ruins.
      - joem32 15y ago
        This has got to be the most ignorant response of the day. One, have you ever been to Detroit. And two, have you ever heard of this thing called capitalism? Last I checked, as natural born Americans, we've got the right to do what we want, where we want to do it. Please, do take a moment to explain to me how it would be in anyone's best interest to just "let" Detroit die? (Assuming it was actually near death) Also, help me understand how building resources in and around Detroit would affect your resources wherever you are (in the Valley)? By the way, you might want to check the data before you go trying to throw anyone under the bus, as Detroit... the dead city that you refer to. Yeah, it's a big part of what gave Michigan the lead in technology hiring in 2010. http://www.mlive.com/business/index.ssf/2011/10/michigan_was_top_state_in_tech.html http://www.mlive.com/business/index.ssf/2011/10/michigan_was... *http://www.freep.com/article/20111006/BUSINESS06/110060525/Michigan-leads-high-tech-job-growth http://www.freep.com/article/20111006/BUSINESS06/110060525/M...
  - joem32 15y ago
    Jerf, just curious, but when was the last time that you left Brighton and spent time in Downtown Detroit outside of a sporting event?
    - jerf 15y ago
      About a year and a half ago. It wasn't terribly different than I expected. Look, if you love it, great. But don't go giving the rest of us a song and dance about how wonderful it is, because there's more vibrancy in a chunk of San Jose I recently stayed in, considered to be a relatively dull Silicon Valley city, than in downtown Detroit. If you don't think it's a city in a very bad place, there's a word for that: denial. Also, I remind you, I'm talking about Detroit, not the region. The region is getting on with life. Detroit is still struggling for breath, and it has become clear that the fate of the region isn't at all particularly tied to Detroit, because the rest of it isn't sinking with it. There's literally no possible way to have a more vivid proof of the fact than by demonstration.
- chaselee 15y ago
  You're first two sentences are the most right.
hugh3 15y ago
Makes sense! I admit I've never actually been to Detroit, but from what I've heard nobody should be pushing for Detroit to be anything other than a nice clean crater.
chaselee 15y ago
As one of the founders from the Ann Arbor area, I can say this list is more of a Southeast Michigan list, an area for which Detroit is often synonymous. Due to their relative proximity, there hasn't been a reason yet to push one city to be a center over the other, it's more so about the region as a whole, which is very well linked together.
- pyre 15y ago
  Maybe people should start condensing the 'Metro Detroit Area' as the MDA (or something like that) similar to the way the 'Greater Toronto Area' is labeled the GTA.
  - mbreese 15y ago
    I don't know how many people outside of Toronto (or Canada) know what GTA means. (I know that I didn't). Abbreviations that make sense locally rarely resonate globally.
    - canadiancreed 15y ago
      As someone that grew up a few hours from Toronto, I'd be confident in saying that the GTA is in the common vernacular for most folks in Southern Ontario. I agree that those outside of that area (in Canada at least) wouldn't, since from outside it looks like it's all Toronto.
  - jordanskole 15y ago
    For people here inside the region this is actually common to say Metro area or SE MI it is just difficult for people outside or who have never been. They just say Detroit. In fact, when I am away on travel, I will tell people I am originally from Lansing and they simply say "so Detroit?" and I def wouldnt consider Lansing part of the MDA
rmason 15y ago
Historically Southeast Michigan has included Ann Arbor in the region. A few of the companies on that list may have an office in Silicon Valley but they were founded and still maintain offices or headquarters in SE Michigan.
kj1210 15y ago
Silicon Valley encompasses many cities in a "region". Here in Detroit, we don't have a name (yet?) to describe the region so we use Detroit to encompass the whole area. Ann Arbor falls within that area. It's roughly a 45 minute drive from Ann Arbor to Detroit...or 35 minutes for me ;) The Detroit "region" or sometimes known as "Detroit Urban Area" or "Metro Detroit", is actually quite large and has many beautiful communities with in it. This wikipedia page sums it up well. The "region" is actually the 9th most populated urban area in the US. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_Detroit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_Detroit People also forget how large the actual city of Detroit is. If you look at the map linked below, you'll see that Boston, San Fran, and Manhattan all can fit within the city limits of Detroit. http://markmaynard.com/?p=56 http://markmaynard.com/?p=56
- pyre 15y ago
  > It's roughly a 45 minute drive from Ann Arbor to > Detroit...or 35 minutes for me ;) But: 1. It's in a different county. 2. You're not really accounting for traffic, though my experiences were during the early 00's. 3. Ann Arbor was a completely different vibe than Detroit, or even a number of the suburbs. 4. Ann Arbor really isn't a suburb of Detroit. If you drive from Detroit to Ann Arbor, the suburbs give way to farmland before you all of the sudden end up in the Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti area.
  - skrebbel 15y ago
    True. Anyone knows that if there's farmland in-between, startups can't be on a list together.
  - ironchef 15y ago
    SF and the valley (or san jose as well) are often used interchangeably, yet: 1. They're in different counties (heck..the valley is even spread over multiple counties). 2. San Jose to SF is often over an hour (with traffic) 3. SF, Valley, San jose have very different vibes 4. Is Palo Alto (for example) a suburb of Fan Francisco or of San Jose? What I'm trying to show is that it's typically called the "detroit area" for simplicity's sake. Just like "the valley" or "sf area" is often used to encompass SF to San Jose (and the east bay as well). It's more of a moniker for the region.
jeffheng 15y ago
Ann Arbor is practically 35-40 minutes away from Detroit via I-94. The region as a whole is how it should be identified/branded. Fragmentation doesn't help anyone nor any community. For example; Mountain View, Cupertino and Palo Alto are all roughly 45-50 minutes away from San Francisco. Yet, it is perfectly fine to say that they are in the Bay Area, or sometimes even as San Francisco for simplicity, familiarity and recognition sake. There is really no reason to treat Detroit like a plague ..... it is 2011, let the dark history be by-gones, and give these start-ups the due respect that they deserve. They could be successful anywhere at all. Detroit and Southeast Michigan are glad to embrace them and support their goals. Great job, Alex, for putting this list together.
- temphn 15y ago
  The only thing is that the problems with Detroit are not in the past, but very much in the present. Ann Arbor and UMich, for better or worse, have a much better reputation in 2011 as engineering centers than Detroit.
nbashaw 15y ago
I don't think it's misleading at all. Here's a direct quote from the page: "While we focus on the Metro Detroit area, we do include entries from throughout the entire state of Michigan. For us it’s about the cause, not about drawing lines in the sand."
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- rick888 15y ago
  They only did this because if they didn't include other areas, the list would be very small. It's misleading and dishonest.
- growdetroit 15y ago
  Glad at least one person reads the page in it's entirety ;) But I'm also glad the thread could fuel some healthy debate.
bilbo0s 15y ago
Easy solution... Perhaps the founders from Ann Arbor could simply have their names removed from the list of startups grown in Detroit. They could find another method for myself, or anyone else on HN who is not from SE Michigan to discover information about them. A list of startups grown in Ann Arbor would be of equivalent interest to everyone here. Or anywhere else for that matter. Oh wait...
- mulka 15y ago
  If you really want the list of Ann Arbor startups. It's here: http://a2geeks.org/display/geek/Companies http://a2geeks.org/display/geek/Companies

by rick888 15y ago

Newmind 15y ago

There are a number of cities in the valley that all consider themselves the same community. I think this is the same sort of concept. The list appears to be based on where the companies were founded not where they currently have presence.

jerf 15y ago
I live in Brighton, 15 minutes north of Ann Arbor, where I work. No, we do not consider ourselves to be "just part of the same community". Detroit's "over there". Detroit does extend out past Detroit proper and there are municipalities where one might just say for convenience "I live in Detroit" to those from out-of-town even though the mailing address isn't Detroit, but there's a lot of not-Detroit less than an hour away. And as Detroit tanks, there's a lot more not-Detroit to be found. While Detroit has been trying to resurrect itself, to take just one for-instance, Ann Arbor has just gotten on with life, and slowly but surely the rest of the region is following. Even if Detroit becomes alive again it will be a while before it culturally dominates the area again, if it ever does. In terms of the sorts of things that might be of interest to Hacker News, there's not much point to resurrecting Detroit and to be honest I don't understand the HN obsession with Detroit. Just drive an hour west. What people don't seem to get is that it really is Detroit that is dead/dying; the Greater Metropolitan Not-Really-Detroit-Anymore area is getting on with it. I will not say thriving, because that isn't true, but only Detroit and the aforementioned absorbed municipalities are dying.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
  - jerf 15y ago
    "In terms of the sorts of things that might be of interest to Hacker News, there's not much point to resurrecting Detroit..." Kindly don't chop important words off of quotes, please. It was never a startup hub, it was never a computer programming tech hub, it was full of the sort of Suits that that startup culture is in large part a reaction against, it is bizarre to insist on trying to turn Detroit into some sort of startup hub when there's one radically further along and tied to a world-class University just an hour west. If you want to resurrect it because it's your home, or because you feel for the people who live there, or because you have other interests that are relevant, go nuts. But I don't get Hacker New's obsession with the topic. A few articles about a case study of a modern city in major decline is interesting from a sociology perspective, but it gets a lot more attention than I'd expect from that.
  - philwelch 15y ago
    Cities have risen and fallen before. Part of the creative destruction of the last few decades involved wealth and power disappearing from Detroit and growing in Silicon Valley. I understand for Detroiters the sentimental value of Detroit, but there's no need for economic activity to happen in Detroit or in any other particular place so long as it happens and happens productively. In fact, it may be against this country's interests for otherwise useful and productive resources to be misdirected towards trying to rebuild failed cities like Detroit when they could be more productively invested elsewhere. People see a city like Detroit turn to ruins and think this is terrible, this needs to be a thriving city again. No, really as long as we have more prosperity elsewhere, Detroit can stay in ruins.
    - joem32 15y ago
      This has got to be the most ignorant response of the day. One, have you ever been to Detroit. And two, have you ever heard of this thing called capitalism? Last I checked, as natural born Americans, we've got the right to do what we want, where we want to do it. Please, do take a moment to explain to me how it would be in anyone's best interest to just "let" Detroit die? (Assuming it was actually near death) Also, help me understand how building resources in and around Detroit would affect your resources wherever you are (in the Valley)? By the way, you might want to check the data before you go trying to throw anyone under the bus, as Detroit... the dead city that you refer to. Yeah, it's a big part of what gave Michigan the lead in technology hiring in 2010. http://www.mlive.com/business/index.ssf/2011/10/michigan_was_top_state_in_tech.html http://www.mlive.com/business/index.ssf/2011/10/michigan_was... *http://www.freep.com/article/20111006/BUSINESS06/110060525/Michigan-leads-high-tech-job-growth http://www.freep.com/article/20111006/BUSINESS06/110060525/M...
- joem32 15y ago
  Jerf, just curious, but when was the last time that you left Brighton and spent time in Downtown Detroit outside of a sporting event?
  - jerf 15y ago
    About a year and a half ago. It wasn't terribly different than I expected. Look, if you love it, great. But don't go giving the rest of us a song and dance about how wonderful it is, because there's more vibrancy in a chunk of San Jose I recently stayed in, considered to be a relatively dull Silicon Valley city, than in downtown Detroit. If you don't think it's a city in a very bad place, there's a word for that: denial. Also, I remind you, I'm talking about Detroit, not the region. The region is getting on with life. Detroit is still struggling for breath, and it has become clear that the fate of the region isn't at all particularly tied to Detroit, because the rest of it isn't sinking with it. There's literally no possible way to have a more vivid proof of the fact than by demonstration.
chaselee 15y ago
You're first two sentences are the most right.

hugh3 15y ago

Makes sense! I admit I've never actually been to Detroit, but from what I've heard nobody should be pushing for Detroit to be anything other than a nice clean crater.

chaselee 15y ago

As one of the founders from the Ann Arbor area, I can say this list is more of a Southeast Michigan list, an area for which Detroit is often synonymous. Due to their relative proximity, there hasn't been a reason yet to push one city to be a center over the other, it's more so about the region as a whole, which is very well linked together.

pyre 15y ago
Maybe people should start condensing the 'Metro Detroit Area' as the MDA (or something like that) similar to the way the 'Greater Toronto Area' is labeled the GTA.
- mbreese 15y ago
  I don't know how many people outside of Toronto (or Canada) know what GTA means. (I know that I didn't). Abbreviations that make sense locally rarely resonate globally.
  - canadiancreed 15y ago
    As someone that grew up a few hours from Toronto, I'd be confident in saying that the GTA is in the common vernacular for most folks in Southern Ontario. I agree that those outside of that area (in Canada at least) wouldn't, since from outside it looks like it's all Toronto.
- jordanskole 15y ago
  For people here inside the region this is actually common to say Metro area or SE MI it is just difficult for people outside or who have never been. They just say Detroit. In fact, when I am away on travel, I will tell people I am originally from Lansing and they simply say "so Detroit?" and I def wouldnt consider Lansing part of the MDA

rmason 15y ago

Historically Southeast Michigan has included Ann Arbor in the region. A few of the companies on that list may have an office in Silicon Valley but they were founded and still maintain offices or headquarters in SE Michigan.

kj1210 15y ago

Silicon Valley encompasses many cities in a "region". Here in Detroit, we don't have a name (yet?) to describe the region so we use Detroit to encompass the whole area. Ann Arbor falls within that area. It's roughly a 45 minute drive from Ann Arbor to Detroit...or 35 minutes for me ;) The Detroit "region" or sometimes known as "Detroit Urban Area" or "Metro Detroit", is actually quite large and has many beautiful communities with in it. This wikipedia page sums it up well. The "region" is actually the 9th most populated urban area in the US. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_Detroit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_Detroit People also forget how large the actual city of Detroit is. If you look at the map linked below, you'll see that Boston, San Fran, and Manhattan all can fit within the city limits of Detroit. http://markmaynard.com/?p=56 http://markmaynard.com/?p=56

pyre 15y ago
> It's roughly a 45 minute drive from Ann Arbor to > Detroit...or 35 minutes for me ;) But: 1. It's in a different county. 2. You're not really accounting for traffic, though my experiences were during the early 00's. 3. Ann Arbor was a completely different vibe than Detroit, or even a number of the suburbs. 4. Ann Arbor really isn't a suburb of Detroit. If you drive from Detroit to Ann Arbor, the suburbs give way to farmland before you all of the sudden end up in the Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti area.
- skrebbel 15y ago
  True. Anyone knows that if there's farmland in-between, startups can't be on a list together.
- ironchef 15y ago
  SF and the valley (or san jose as well) are often used interchangeably, yet: 1. They're in different counties (heck..the valley is even spread over multiple counties). 2. San Jose to SF is often over an hour (with traffic) 3. SF, Valley, San jose have very different vibes 4. Is Palo Alto (for example) a suburb of Fan Francisco or of San Jose? What I'm trying to show is that it's typically called the "detroit area" for simplicity's sake. Just like "the valley" or "sf area" is often used to encompass SF to San Jose (and the east bay as well). It's more of a moniker for the region.

jeffheng 15y ago

Ann Arbor is practically 35-40 minutes away from Detroit via I-94. The region as a whole is how it should be identified/branded. Fragmentation doesn't help anyone nor any community. For example; Mountain View, Cupertino and Palo Alto are all roughly 45-50 minutes away from San Francisco. Yet, it is perfectly fine to say that they are in the Bay Area, or sometimes even as San Francisco for simplicity, familiarity and recognition sake. There is really no reason to treat Detroit like a plague ..... it is 2011, let the dark history be by-gones, and give these start-ups the due respect that they deserve. They could be successful anywhere at all. Detroit and Southeast Michigan are glad to embrace them and support their goals. Great job, Alex, for putting this list together.

temphn 15y ago
The only thing is that the problems with Detroit are not in the past, but very much in the present. Ann Arbor and UMich, for better or worse, have a much better reputation in 2011 as engineering centers than Detroit.

nbashaw 15y ago

I don't think it's misleading at all. Here's a direct quote from the page: "While we focus on the Metro Detroit area, we do include entries from throughout the entire state of Michigan. For us it’s about the cause, not about drawing lines in the sand."

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
rick888 15y ago
They only did this because if they didn't include other areas, the list would be very small. It's misleading and dishonest.
growdetroit 15y ago
Glad at least one person reads the page in it's entirety ;) But I'm also glad the thread could fuel some healthy debate.

bilbo0s 15y ago

Easy solution... Perhaps the founders from Ann Arbor could simply have their names removed from the list of startups grown in Detroit. They could find another method for myself, or anyone else on HN who is not from SE Michigan to discover information about them. A list of startups grown in Ann Arbor would be of equivalent interest to everyone here. Or anywhere else for that matter. Oh wait...

mulka 15y ago
If you really want the list of Ann Arbor startups. It's here: http://a2geeks.org/display/geek/Companies http://a2geeks.org/display/geek/Companies