
Why Are Some Cities More Entrepreneurial Than Others? - davidw
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/24/why-are-some-cities-more-entrepreneurial-than-others/
======
pchristensen
When one city has the smallest possible benefit to entrepreneurs that it's
worth moving there, it will gain huge benefits over time (cumulative
advantage). New York was smaller than Philadelphia, Boston, Charleston, and
Baltimore when the colonies were primarily trading with England, but when
internal trade grew, New York's larger, deeper harbor and the fact that its
river connected it to its hinterland made it the logical depot and it quickly
outgrew the other cities. People were making cars lots of places for decades
before Detroit gained the production, materials, suppliers to become _the_
place to build cars. Phoenix, Boston, Texas, New Jersey and SV all had
transistor and electronics technology, but Fred Terman and William Shockley
were enough to turn one of those into a global power.

Now, the connections, ideas, investors, and labor pool mean that SV has a much
bigger advantage than any other place when it comes to web tech. You can
either do it where you are, where your personal connections matter, or you can
move to SV. Few people that don't go to school there even move to Boston to
start companies. No other city (anyone from Austin, Seattle, or Boulder want
to correct me?) has people move there to start a company. Maybe they move
there for a job and start a company later, but if you want to move to help you
start a tech company, there's only one place to move to.

------
skmurphy
Key quote: "An abundance of small, independent firms is, along with January
temperature and share of the population with college degrees, one of the best
predictors of urban growth." References cited:

Abundance of small firms:
[http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/glaeser/files/Clust...](http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/glaeser/files/Clusters.pdf)

Jan temp: <http://www.economics.harvard.edu/pub/hier/2007/HIER2135.pdf>

College Degrees: <http://www.economics.harvard.edu/pub/hier/2003/HIER2025.pdf>

------
jimbokun
"If the self-employment rate captures entrepreneurship, then West Palm Beach
is by far the most entrepreneurial place in the country and the San Jose
metropolitan area, that home of Silicon Valley, is one of the least."

So is self-employment rate a poor gauge of entrepreneurship, or is Silicon
Valley less entrepreneurial than we tend to think and West Palm Beach more so?
Are all the people working for other people's companies in Silicon Valley
really as entrepreneurial as they think they are?

~~~
rubeng
I live in West Palm Beach, and I have to say, this is one of the worst places
for a startup. The mindset here is anything but entrepreneurial. It's
ridiculously difficult to get any sort of traction going. People come here to
retire and die; their mindset reflects that. Unfortunately, I have two
properties that I'm upside down on, and I can't sell -- I'm out of here as
soon as I can.

~~~
Ras_
Plenty of business in retirement & death + low competition.

Bad for living "the start-up life" - but it might be a golden opportunity for
business.

~~~
rubeng
I'd rather enjoy the business that I start, someone else can take advantage of
this environment -- I'll pass on the business opportunity.

------
davidw
I was a bit reticent about posting this since economics articles tend to lead
to flame wars, but it is interesting, and based on research, and doesn't have
much in the way of policy/politics. Flag away if you don't think it should be
here.

~~~
tokenadult
This seems perfectly on-topic to me, and reminds me of one of pg's essays on a
very similar subject:

<http://paulgraham.com/cities.html>

