
Silicon Valley Arrogance - danw
http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2008/02/silicon-valley.html
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tx
I like SV. Most people outside of it, albeit smart and intelligent, "don't get
Internet" and it's quite apparent. While there are always exceptions to any
rule, it's still a rule nevertheless, therefore the original guy's comment
_"... even for the east coast"_ IMO is still valid.

We're in Austin, TX - commonly accepted as 4th largest startup hub behind
Valley, Boston and Seattle. And people here don't get Internet - everybody's
busy inventing new ways of being acquired by IBM via producing yet another
boring (but always revolutionary) B2B crap on J2EE.

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drubio
Don't take it to personal...I'm not even near the valley, but: * Politicians
say this about Washington * Movie Stars about LA * Bankers about NY

You can be anything you want and excel at it anywhere in the world, but its
the BIG LEAGUE perception in each respective profession of being in that
city/region, take it as a complement not an insult ;)

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mixmax
I totally agree.

And furthermore I think that it is not always good for entrepreneurs to be in
Silicon Valley. I have noticed that a lot of valley people are extremely
focused on whatever the fad of the day is. If your website doesn't have tags
and RSS feeds, and is done in Ruby on Rails you are just sooo yesterday.

But guess what? Nobody cares. Most people that use the web (AKA customers)
don't even know what any of these things are. They just want something that
works.

And they don't care whether it is built with Ruby or assembler, or whether it
has Megoo-ultraflash mashup components.

People from the valley often miss this.

~~~
pchristensen
Anyone who gets caught up in that mentality should go read Joel On Software.
He gets some derision in technical circles because he uses [holding nose]
Microsoft products, but he makes technical decisions based on how it will
affect his business. And he has a successful business. Go figure!

And he's not in Silicon Valley.

~~~
mixmax
I'm actually reading his book right now....

Yes he definitely gets it.

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sethg
I work for a non-Silicon-Valley company that was incorporated in 2001, has had
several rounds of financing, and seems to be doing quite well thank you very
much, even though we don't use Ruby on Rails _or_ have a Facebook app.

(Although my expense reimbursement checks are issued by "Silicon Valley Bank".
Go figure.)

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amohr
I think it's like going to LA - yeah that's where most of the major deals go
down, but 8 out of 10 waitresses are also aspiring actresses. If you take a
random sampling of people in the valley, you are much more likely to find
people trying to break into the business than people who have already made it.

I've talked to some people about _why_ silicon valley is where it is and some
say it's pretty arbitrary, some even claim that a new "silicon prairie" if you
will, could be started here. Then the temperature goes from 52 to 12 with -11
windchill and, suddenly, we realize all over again why we too want to move to
California.

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gojomo
I thought the midwest and east coast still used gopher?

~~~
icky
... and FTP to transfer their cave paintings? ;-)

~~~
sabat
No, man, they've upgraded to Archie.

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s7nguy
Well this blog post has now been updated as the person who sent that email
turned out to be from nyc

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kajecounterhack
I live in Holmdel NJ, home of telecom. Maybe not Silicon valley, but the
people here are damn bright and all the people here are as savvy as the west
coasters near silicon valley.

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alaskamiller
I read this and agree that he has a good mastery of Silicon Valley folks.

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simianstyle
Who was the email from? Perhaps it may have not been worth replying to.

