My experience as an entrepreneur at Georgia Tech has been that it is a great place to start a B2B startup, especially if it falls within one of the verticals th

My experience as an entrepreneur at Georgia Tech has been that it is a great place to start a B2B startup, especially if it falls within one of the verticals the Atlanta investment and startup community has "adopted" such as security. It can also be a good place to start other kinds of B2B startups, but it takes more work in some areas than it would in the valley. On the plus side, Georgia Tech and ATDC give you access to great advisors who, with no expectation of compensation, have provided me and others I know with excellent advice on everything from hiring to sales. Multiple startups started at Tech as Pindrop Security and RideCell / InstantCab (disclaimer: founder) have bootstrapped at Tech, sold their first few customers and then raised money from some of the best investors on both coasts. And yes, the cost of living, and therefore the cost of running your company is much lower than it would be in the valley. On the minus side, Georgia Tech and Atlanta are both tough places to start consumer startups and that will take time to change. It is tougher to raise money for all kinds of startups, save perhaps security, than in Silicon Valley. There is definitely a higher risk averseness amongst local investors and they expect a higher level of control on the companies they invest in. Unfortunately for them, as PG says, some of the best ideas are frighteningly ambitious. It's hard for an ecosystem to have multiple large exits without funding a few of these. Without large exits being reinvested locally, the virtuous circle takes longer to take off. Also, given that more and more west coast investors believe that startups are better off with founders at the steering wheel, entrepreneurs are unlikely to compromise on that just to raise money locally. I hope Atlanta and Georgia Tech will continue to improve as a birthing place for all kinds of startups. I am definitely curious about what happened here. If, as the article suggests, the crux of the matter lies in $50K worth of chips being sent to Korea - the reaction from the University and the GBI seems quite extreme.