

What Makes Boston's Start-Up Scene Special? - venturefizz
http://venturefizz.com/blog/what-makes-bostons-start-scene-special

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NEPatriot
I'll tell you what is and is not special about Boston (I live in Boston). This
is the city with the VC community that told Facebook - no thanks, take your
app somewhere else. If Facebook had been founded in Boston the entire
landscape here would have been different. Instead, we see most of our
brightest students go to the valley by default. So the "old" money in Boston
is not special and neither is the "old boy's club" often associated with older
cities.

What is special about it? Top educational institutions, history of success,
and the will (tbd) to compete with the valley.

~~~
tibbon
Additionally a lot of the VC figures for Boston count in biotech numbers (as
they should) but this often makes it look like we are floating in cash here-
which isn't the case. YC also skipped town, which was unfortunate. Thankfully
we've got TechStars now handling similar here.

What I think makes Boston special is that we've got some of the brightest
students in a very geographically dense area, a great tech community
(betahouse, WebInnovators, Sprout Labs), some decent local tech publications
(Xconomy, Mass High Tech), coffee shops willing to deal with hordes of laptop
users, etc.

Plus while it is expensive here- it isn't so ungodly expensive like having an
office in Manhattan. I'm guessing New Work City's (coworking spot in NYC) rent
is probably 2-4x that of betahouse in Cambridge. Stuff like that makes
startups a bit easier here.

~~~
NEPatriot
Boston VCs should give young hungry startups a chance.

A team of 2-3 brilliant early 20's building the next google is the dream of
the valley.

Hopefully some of the successful Boston founders cultivate the talent here and
come up with a nice (PR) Boston story.

------
bravura
One of my advisors told me that the difference between the MIT style and the
Stanford style of startups is:

* MIT style is cover your test sheet so no one copies you.

* Stanford style is go out with your competition and share information so you are both stronger.

