3 ms·

"Like loneliness or stress or sickness or unemployment or high prices or lack of education." I actually experienced this first hand recently while on a long tr

"Like loneliness or stress or sickness or unemployment or high prices or lack of education." I actually experienced this first hand recently while on a long trip spanning multiple cities in the US and Canada. People seemed to have a very different set of problems/concerns on top of their minds outside of SV. It was weird at first, but then it became very refreshing. I am not a New Yorker and will dare make the same comment as Michael Waxman (disclosure: Michael is a friend) - step outside SV and people's problems switch away from Socialcam vs Viddy to I can't make my mortgage, I'm getting sick, our kids won't move out etc.

chipotle_coyote 14y ago
Because people in Santa Clara County don't have issues relating to housing and health care? I've seen this argued before by various people from Alex Payne to Buzz Andersen and I'm starting to feel like it may be a good idea to add an asterisk to this assertion: this is a function of the people in SV that you happen to be talking to. It's true that many of the startups in Silicon Valley and San Francisco are focused on "social media" and this leads to an awful lot of circle jerking that may be sharply lessened in other places, but it's not too difficult to find all sorts of startups out here that are focused on less abstract problems than how open the Twitter API is. (Also, I think that just as people out here can miss the circle-jerkiness of the Silicon Valley scene, people in other cities sometimes tend to miss their own brands of it.)
- abbasmehdi 14y ago
  I think you have a good point - cities might be statistically similar but getting out to another city might help in stepping out of your usual circle, which is not to say you cannot do the same while staying in your hometown. Side note: This reminds me of a conversation I had with Wesley Zhao, a co-founder of Family Leaf, who said he finds it refreshing to hang out with normals while working on Family Leaf in Palo Alto. It's great advice for a tech founders to actively seek this out IMO.

chipotle_coyote 14y ago

Because people in Santa Clara County don't have issues relating to housing and health care? I've seen this argued before by various people from Alex Payne to Buzz Andersen and I'm starting to feel like it may be a good idea to add an asterisk to this assertion: this is a function of the people in SV that you happen to be talking to. It's true that many of the startups in Silicon Valley and San Francisco are focused on "social media" and this leads to an awful lot of circle jerking that may be sharply lessened in other places, but it's not too difficult to find all sorts of startups out here that are focused on less abstract problems than how open the Twitter API is. (Also, I think that just as people out here can miss the circle-jerkiness of the Silicon Valley scene, people in other cities sometimes tend to miss their own brands of it.)

abbasmehdi 14y ago
I think you have a good point - cities might be statistically similar but getting out to another city might help in stepping out of your usual circle, which is not to say you cannot do the same while staying in your hometown. Side note: This reminds me of a conversation I had with Wesley Zhao, a co-founder of Family Leaf, who said he finds it refreshing to hang out with normals while working on Family Leaf in Palo Alto. It's great advice for a tech founders to actively seek this out IMO.