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I'm originally from Vamcouver and spent the majority of my 20s there working in the Games Industry before switching more to web and mobile and then moving to th
by endergen 13y ago
I'm originally from Vamcouver and spent the majority of my 20s there working in the Games Industry before switching more to web and mobile and then moving to the US for last 5 years. So I've obsessed and tracked this topic. I've lived in many States in the US as well as Montreal in Candada.
I think reading Steve Blank's Secret History of Silicon Valley gave me the best break through in understanding of why Silicon Valley is so dominant in tech.
http://steveblank.com/secret-history/ http://steveblank.com/secret-history/
There's just been decades and decades and billions of even World War and Cold War money poured into into it's infrastructure. The shear amount of money and momentum of peak US effort seems nearly impossible to catch up to.
My best advice to other locations is to tie into SV as best as you can and of course focus on getting to scale by bringing in external to your local economy revenue and partnerships to bootstrap, but regardless it's gonna be a long haul. SV is the Holliwood of programmers and its best to acknowledge that. If you are an actor in Canada you know you are likely going to stay small time unless you go down North West for example and break out or stick to a niche.
- liquimoon 13y agoCompletely agreed! Thanks for sharing the insight.
- endergen 13y agoI appreciate the appreciation. :)
- amix 13y agoLocation was important some years ago, but I think it's less and less relevant now. I think you can create amazing technology anywhere (in Latin America, in Europe, in Asia etc.) Skype is a great example of this: they created a billion dollar company in Europe; and most of the development was done in Estonia (a country of about 1.3 million people, much less than most bigger cities). Asia, especially Taiwan and South Korea, have some amazing examples as well (like HTC, Samsung, Asus etc.)
- raverbashing 13y agoYes, but it was a big deal 10 years ago, and still is today. And it may still be relevant because of face-to-face interactions. No, Hangouts won't cut it And Github has probably done a lot for remote work, but there's still a gap
- jond3k 13y agoIf you're a small-time programmer unless you move to SV, what does it mean to be 'big' in programming?