

Ask HN: What is the most up and coming city for tech? - armenarmen

I was wondering what the community's thoughts were on what the best city (outside of silicon valley) for tech is and ask why they thought so,
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canadiancreed
My preception is mostly for the Canadian market, but for Canadians, Toronto is
the place that I'd tell folks looking to get into the industry that they
should go. I've worked in Ottawa, Montreal, and Atlantic Canada beforehand,
and the amount of action going on in TO dwarfs all of them put together. Tons
of companies, tons of potential opportunities, it's the best place in Canada
to get started if you're into the IT sector.

Full disclosure: I currently work in the GTA. I also loathe living in the
city, especially Toronto (I'm not a city guy, but you go where the work is in
Canada so...)

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KoryFerbet
I live in Seattle so I'm a bit biased, but I really do think that it's a
fantastic city for tech. All of the big dogs are here (amazon, google,
facebook, Microsoft) but there are also a lot of very innovative and creative
well known startups and smaller companies. (Cheezburger, Tippr, etc..).

I have also heard great things about Austin, I have spent some time there as
well and I love it as a city. I just don't know much about it in relation to
the tech market.

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freehunter
I'm a little confused by the question ("up and coming" relates a different
meaning to me than "outside silicon valley"), but I wouldn't call Seattle up
and coming by my personal definition. Especially since Amazon, Microsoft,
Nintendo, et al are there. The existence of smaller companies doesn't negate
the fact that there are already huge, established players there and the city
is already known to be a huge tech haven.

My opinion would point more towards something like Detroit. A city not well
known for tech (and well known for not being an economic powerhouse). But with
Dan Gilbert's "Webward Avenue" and Dan Izzo's "Bizdom U" startup accelerator
(founded when YCombinator was still a baby), new tech is starting to trickle
into Detroit. See also: Detroit Venture Partners, M@dison.

There's a backing of billionaires willing to put as much as they can into
Detroit to make it a tech haven, and so far it's showing some progress. I
don't live in or even near Detroit, but it's a pretty promising sign for a
city (and state) suffering the full brunt of technology's impact on unskilled
labor.

[1][http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2011/06/transfor...](http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2011/06/transform_detroit_dan_gilberts.html)

[2][http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-izzo/go-midwest-young-
entr...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-izzo/go-midwest-young-
entrepre_b_1137509.html?type=10)

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armenarmen
Thanks guys, I live in Houston (in UH's entrepreneurship program and teaching
myself to code) now so Austin is one of the places I'm really considering, but
I am from Denver so boulder too is appealing. What do you all think about
Boise? I hear that it's like Austin ten years ago, and click bank and some
other big guys are based out of there. I've got one year until graduating so
the clock is beginning to tick!

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damoncali
Austin is on the verge of being a clear #2 to Silicon Valley in my view. The
recent growth has been enormous.

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armenarmen
Austin looks better and better to me every day

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connor
My co-founder and I are hopping among different start-up hubs in the US to get
a feel for this sort of thing. So far, Boulder has been the most dense (though
it's small in size- ~ pop 100,000). And Austin seems to be one of the most
active (not as dense, but a larger population overall- so a larger critical
tech mass). Austin feels like it poised to be a giant.

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stray
Chattanooga looks interesting.

They have reasonably priced, supafast internet access and there are quite a
few startups in the area already.

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armenarmen
Don't they have a big start up grant thing as well no?

