

It’s Up to You, Entrepreneurs - nreece
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/516521/its-up-to-you-entrepreneurs/

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joshuaellinger
I like the article but it reminds me of the quote:

    
    
        "A politician is someone who gets in front of a mob calls it a parade."
    

I don't mean that as a slight. I just think that the article makes him out as
the figurehead of a movement that comes from a different place.

I think startup communities are a nature consequence of geeks getting money
and deciding it is more interesting to build companies that buy fancy cars. It
is somehow an echo of the original .Com boom combined with Moore's law
changing the balance of power in the business world.

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acgourley
He (and some of his associates) basically bootstrapped the entire boulder
startup scene. His advice that is takes 20 years is direct personal experience
of his.

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andrewescott
From the title, I had expected an article on start-up communities that were
themselves spread across many countries around the globe. However, it turned
out to be about city-centric startup communities that can be in any city.

Are we still at the stage where a community needs to be based in the same
physical place? Why don't the currently available collaboration tools enable
start-ups and the communities around them to be independent of location?

Does it come down to: most VCs won't invest outside their own cities?

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acgourley
Humans are built to socialize in meat space. I've been on HN since about the
beginning. I have met... two people through it that I now consider friends.
I've met so many more outside of it, it's hard to even compare the two
concepts.

~~~
zanny
I think you are comparing nuts and bolts. HN and its other popularity-forum
colleagues like reddit are not very conductive to network building or long
term friendship forging. Your interaction with me, for example, is at most
reading this post, _maybe_ reading my comment history (1 in a million) and
either replying with your own take on what I wrote, or moving on. There is no
commonality there besides the discussion topic and the means of communication,
and the dialog ends instantly when you are done posting.

I made most of my current online-friends in video games, mainly WoW, some in
rpgs like Neverwinter Nights, some from my emulator days. I think it is the
difference between a shared hobby and interest in it you can talk about
outside the discussion channels, and the blurred lines between what HN
topically discusses - since it is usually all about startups and VC and tech,
it is very business driven rather than hobby driven, even when you get a fair
bit of hobbyist and OT threads at the top, the culture, expectations, and
environment stay the same.

