

Ask HN: What cities in the US have a growing startup/entrepreneur community? - timjahn

We're looking to start bringing our Entrepreneurs Unpluggd (http://www.entrepreneursunpluggd.com) events to other cities soon and I've been surprised at the cities that have amazing growing entrepreneur startup scenes (Indianapolis, Kansas City, Des Moines, to name a few). I'm curious what else is out there.<p>Does your city/area have a growing startup/entrepreneur scene/community? Where?
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rmason
In Michigan Ann Arbor has a large startup community and ecosystem. Most of the
states VC and angel community is in Ann Arbor.

East Lansing has a small but very active and growing community, check out the
group Hackers and Hustlers on Facebook. The city of East Lansing sponsors two
incubators, a regular one and another which is limited to MSU students.

There are also small communities in Grand Rapids, Midland and Kalamazoo. Grand
Rapids just had a lean startup workshop and GVSU has its own YC style
incubator.

Kalamazoo just started a Hackers and Hustlers chapter and they've got another
group that meets regularly with people doing pitches.

If you're considering coming to Michigan let me know and I will try to help
you.

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jeffepp
May want to add Detroit in there too :)

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xiaoma
My home area of Boulder, Colorado does. When I left the US 8 years ago, it was
a very nice college town with some computer companies, but nothing that
exciting that I knew of. Now, there's a Tech Stars (the original, I think),
the Foundry group, a ton of software start-ups, biotech companies (some of
which existed before to be fair), and even at least one solar power- start-up.
Not bad for a town of 100,000!

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timjahn
I've heard great things about the Boulder scene! Do you know personally of any
events that happen on a regular or semi-regular basis and are well attended?

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tworats
San Diego has an active and growing community, and there's been a lot of
growth in events, meetups, and venues recently. Even the funding community is
starting to get its act together.

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timjahn
Good to know! Do you have any links to events, etc.? Would love to learn more
about the scene there.

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tworats
SD Tech Scene has a pretty list, and Brant Cooper has a San Diego Startup list
email that goes out on Mondays.

<http://www.sdtechscene.org/>

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lionheart
Phoenix and the area around it is actually currently booming with startup
activity. Arizona State is supporting a ton of startup efforts, there's a new
incubator that just launched and another incubator planning to open it's doors
at the end of the summer. It's all very exciting to watch as there didn't use
to be much activity at all.

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josephmosby
Nashville and Austin. Perhaps Austin has been ahead of the curve a bit with
SXSW, but Nashville is really starting to take off with healthcare tech.

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mindcrime
The Triangle area, North Carolina... Durham / Raleigh / RTP / Chapel Hill.

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abbasmehdi
Los Angeles is very "stop and go". Something like EU might help.

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timjahn
"Stop and go" in the sense that there are lots of good events, then nothing
for awhile, then lots of good events again? Trying to understand exactly what
you mean by "stop and go".

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abbasmehdi
Sorry for being unclear. Lots of action, then dead for a while, a long while,
then some action again. As an exercise, just look at how many
hacker/entrepreneur/tech scene related meetups there are in LA (hundreds), and
how many of those have a meeting planned or have any regular conversation
(maybe one or two).

From a start-up point of view, this city lacks structure; if we have a program
were every xyz date a program begins and ends then that might help bring an
even flow.

