

Y Combinator’s firms mostly heed ‘go West’ advice - fallentimes
http://www.masshightech.com/stories/2008/09/08/weekly7-Y-Combinators-firms-mostly-heed-go-West-advice.html

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fallentimes
What's hilarious is how puzzled many of the VCs I meet with are over the fact
that everyone leaves Boston. They constantly ask what they can do to get more
startups to stay in Boston.

It's simple; invest in more companies. IMHO Boston is an ideal place for a
startup: great city with lots to do, solid public transportation, very
reasonable living costs (more like Chicago than DC, NYC or SF), tons of talent
(oh hai MIT and Harvard) and very close to other metropolitan areas (NYC, DC).
But all of this doesn't matter - people follow the money.

Also, as big as the discrepancy is between the amount of VCs in the SF area
vs. the Boston area, the discrepancy between SF area Angels and Boston area
Angels is even bigger.

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menloparkbum
_very reasonable living costs_

[http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2005/09/08/report_ra...](http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2005/09/08/report_rates_boston_most_expensive_city/)

Have rental prices collapsed in the past 3 years? When I moved to Boston my
apartment cost more than the one I had in NYC and when I left the apartment I
moved to in SF cost less.

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lsb
Around Harvard Square, it's pretty expensive, but I found a 4br apartment for
$2460/month 5 minutes' bike (downhill) from Davis, so it's pretty reasonable
if you're willing to live with people. If you need something closer to Boston
proper, that's more expensive, but Davis is cute and homey, and people smile
at you in the streets.

~~~
fallentimes
And most importantly the bars and restaurants in Davis are excellent. Email me
if you ever want to grab drinks in Davis.

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speby
This could also be one of those "if you were on the other side" arguments. As
much as I am annoyed by the Boston investors' skittshness (not to excuse other
investors from being skittish), I wonder if I too would be a pansy when it
came down to investing in 21 year olds with startups who have practically no
business model or revenue stream. I guess I hope not to be that way one day
but maybe I understand why these guys are like that. It's clear, though, they
do miss out on huge portfolio gains by passing on a lot of these startups that
end up just remaining on the west coast.

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josefresco
Screw going west, go east .. I'm out on Cape Cod and loving it.

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vaksel
I wonder what the minimum # of companies you need to get the critical mass for
people staying. By which I mean numerous companies staying in the same area
where you can stand in the middle of a street and point to 30 different
buildings and say which company stays there

