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Ask PG: What are the startup hubs outside of the US?
PG, you mention that there are 5-6 startup hubs worldwide. I think you mentioned Silicon Valley and Cambridge. Where are the other 3-4? Are they too in the US?
- cstejerean 19y agoI know that several countries have tried to replicate the Silicon Valley model to various degrees of success. I think by far Silicon Valley is at the top of the list with the others lagging far behind but I can't think of where in the world there would be good startup hubs.
- maurycy 19y agoLondon?
- fauigerzigerk 19y agoIf you're in europe, London is definately the place to be. But bring a big suitcase, pack a suit and a tie and stuff the remaining space with money ;-)
- stuki 19y agoHow about Tallinn? Hardly a tech hub, but from what I have heard (never been there), a bit of a startup scene.
- Tichy 19y agoHey, good idea, are they not super-techy there, like they even pay for parking slots through their mobile phones?
- davy 19y agoI would also assume that Tallinn might be a good place for startups (definitely a fun place in any case). Didn't Estonia provide free high-speed wireless to the entire population? Plus, it's a beautiful area -- I loved my visit there.
- getp 19y agoYou've just mentioned my reservation about London: because cost of living - a startup's main costs in the beginning - is so much higher than the rest of Europe, your increased burn rate would have to be justified by increased opportunities. Or are all startup hubs expensive to live in?
- danw 19y agoYou can always live/work outside London and hop in for the events+networking. Brighton is particularly popular, though I am partial to Bristol myself.
- fauigerzigerk 19y agoCheap startup hubs probably don't exist. They are hubs because everybody moves there, which inevitably makes housing expensive. The trouble with London is that if your funding is in USD or EUR the exchange rate exacerbates the problem. There are upsides too, however. Many european countries require entrepreneurs to make very high social security contributions regardless of earnings. In some cases as high as EUR 350 for earnings of 0, so that counts towards the burn rate as well. In the UK the basic rate of NI contributions for the self-employed is GBP 2 (USD 4) a week, which covers health insurance excluding dental. (currency symbols don't appear to work here...)
- pg 19y agoNo. London shares with NYC the problem of being a big city and thus expensive to live in. Some of the other places are quite cheap. SV is. SF is expensive, but SV is a huge expanse of cheap, month-to-month apts.
- garbowza 19y agoWhat about the top few in the US. Of course Silicon Valley is tops, followed by Cambridge/Boston. But after that, perhaps: Boulder, Los Angeles, New York, Austin, Seattle. Any other votes?
- icey 19y agoShanghai is an enormous startup hub. Bangalore and Mumbai (formerly Bombay) are also quite large from what I understand, but I haven't dealt enough with that market to know exactly how large they are.
- hsuresh 19y agoBangalore, yes. Mumbai, not really.
- carter 19y agoHosting a lot of startups doesn't turn a particular town or region into a startup hub. I don't know China well to talk about it, but I've never heard about cool successful startups in China. Maybe it's like here, in Academgorodok, Russia: a lot of IT companies, but they all are outsourcers or small players. Have you ever heard about startup from Academgorodok?
- prakash 19y agoBangalore.
- anupamkapoor 19y agocould you mention a few places to check out the startup action ?
- pramodbiligiri 19y agoAttend the BarCamp, in November I think.
- ardit33 19y ago"followed by Cambridge/Boston" -- really? When I lived there, it was very very hard to find technical people that were not "corporate drones". I new maybe of only one or two startup (I am not sure they ended up anywhere). Most other companies are "enterprise oriented", such as VM-ware types. I remember attending few session at an incubator close to MIT campus. The speeches were given for people that had build products like "scanners" for airports, and government etc.. not software oriented One thing I remember, this guy from HBS, with a very smug attitude ( maybe b/c he got into haavad he thought he was better than everybody). Not a hacker friendly atmosphere at all. Most people there were the "business" types, that had "ideas" and buzzwords, but very low on concrete implementation and treated technical skills just as a commodity that could bought off in India. Boston is not "eccentric" and "whacky" enough to support an environment with lots of startups with crazy and novel ideas. Here is few facts: You don't see naked people in the streets on Boston's fairs. It is mostly family/9-5-er or young students, which tells you about the general population of the place. If you are in your mid 20s, and out of school, it is not a good place to be. You can't buy alcohol on Sundays You can't have wine/beer in a coffee place (Puritanism at max) Most coffee/food places around Harvard sq. and Davis sq (the artsy part) closed by MIDNIGHT!!! WTF? Most good programmers I know are most efficient at midnight, and having things/places to get "fuel", (coffee and food) and some re-energizing is very important. For many reasons, I think NYC would be a better place for a startup, if it wasn't so damn expensive, which kills ideas that have no business model right away. But as a place is very vibrant, lots of stuff to do, good looking women, and lots of money around, which are motivators for people to try harder and make it happen. The only thing that the Boston/Cambridge are has is it's student population. -- which not surprisingly moves out somewhere else after school, and that it is a very walk-able city. You can walk to places, take the T (subway), which is very cool. Personally, I like SF a lot, but I would never live in the South Bay. All those seas of parking lots and the "drive everywhere" culture is very depressing and soul drenching. Efficient for big corporations like HP and Yahoo, but I can't see it being good for a small start up. My preference for startups: SF beats them all. NYC second (if it wasn't so damn expensive), but it has bonus point for being so close to the old media advertising, then Cambridge/Boston (for having so many college kids around). I think, Eastern Europe is going to become more prominent in the IT world. You have lots of smart and well educated people at sciences, still cheap, and with a good sense of entrepreneurship (unlike India or China, which see life more as a career, eastern europeans are new to capitalism, and view this time as a great opportunity). It will take a decade or so, but you will see more things coming out from places like Hungary, Croatia, Romania etc. I doubt it will ever be a single large European "hub". Edited for spelling, and adding some content.
- deleted 19y ago[deleted]
- pg 19y agoNot including China and India (which I don't know well enough to talk about), roughly: SV, Boston, {Seattle, Austin, NYC, London}.
- kingnothing 19y agoHow is Chicago? I would expect it to be a great city, since it's 24/7 and has a huge finance industry.
- brianmckenzie 19y agoCalling Chicago a 24-hour city is overstating the case a little bit. There is some startup activity there, though.
- ptn 19y agoMaybe Japan?
- staunch 19y agoCertainly there's quite a bit of startup activity in Tokyo, but I'm not sure it's dense enough or advanced enough to call it a hub.
- chaostheory 19y agoI could be wrong, but based on my personal experience Japanese culture at large frowns heavily at risk (especially if you've already failed once). People tend to look down on you unless you work for big respectable company 'x' with respectable title 'y'. Not to mention it's very difficult living on the cheap in Japan. You'll have much better luck in NY...
- far33d 19y agoI asked this a while ago... here's the responses: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43195 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43195
- axiom 19y agoWaterloo, Ontario. The University of Waterloo has a policy that any IP developed by profs or grad students is owned by them rather than the university. In addition Waterloo was the first school to do co-op in engineering when it was founded in 1957 (and still has the largest co-op program in the world.) This adds up to an ungodly number of startups coming outof Waterloo. Something like 10-15% of all startups in Canada. The UW computer science school is actually named after David Cheriton, the Waterloo grad who introduced Sergey and Larry to investors, and made a few billion out of his stake in Google. More damningly perhaps, Microsoft hires more engineers from Waterloo than anywhere else :)
- Caligula 19y agoThe university of waterloo is the best engineering university in Canada but I think Ottawa has far more startups than Waterloo.
- mrtron 19y agoI would have to disagree here... Perhaps Ottawa HAD more (in the telecommunications boom), but Waterloo is really bustling with startups. Some examples: Open Text, Rim, Maple, Descartes and the list goes on and on. Also, a lot of companies are putting offices into Waterloo's research park, including Google.
- dAS 19y agoI wouldn't consider OpenText, RIM, Maple or Descartes as start-ups (they were once start-ups yes, but not any more)... but yes.. there are a lot of start-ups in Waterloo.
- chaostheory 19y ago"The University of Waterloo has a policy that any IP developed by profs or grad students is owned by them rather than the university." wow - that's almost unheard of at any good university in the US
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- lsemel 19y agoNYC is getting pretty good startup vibe. Check out www.alleyinsider.com, www.nextny.org, and a bunch of startup-related Meetups.
- cglee 19y agoBeijing - home to Sina, Sohu, Google China, IBM Software Lab, Microsoft and two world class universities (Tsinghua and Beijing University). There are also tons of smaller startups started by both native Chinese entrepreneurs as well as foreigners. The energy level is incredible there.
- chaostheory 19y agomy only concern with Bejing as opposed to Shanghai is how well they enforce certain laws (since it is the capital). Granted fighting corruption is one thing, but the better they enforce laws like censorship (that hinder creativity), the worse for business in general... Look at Singapore (which is the model that China eventually wants to be for better or worse)... it's so repressed and 50's clean that you have natives with masters degrees who don't know how to have sex (no I am not making this up - this was news five years ago). Singapore offsets its population and innovation problem through gov sponsored immigration (typically favoring the west) and a laissez faire attitude on taboo industries like biotech (an attitude that China shares).
- sharpshoot 19y agoLondon
- mikhailfranco 19y agoDon't forget the original Cambridge, it's especially good for biotech. Mik P.S. Cambridge MA was renamed from Newtowne in 1638 as a publicity stunt when Harvard was formed
- rodrigo 19y agoAnybody from Mexico?
- run4yourlives 19y agoI gotta put Vancouver BC on that list. There are way too many startups coming from there not to make mention of it.