

Should you move your startup to the Valley? - calvin
http://www.tonywright.com/2009/should-you-move-your-startup-to-the-valley-depends-on-where-you-are-data-included/

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indiejade
_< snip>The bottom line? It’s hard to quantify the COST of moving to a startup
(months of distraction, expense, stress, loss of social network, etc)</snip>_

The cost / benefit thing isn't entirely monetary.

It's one of those things where if you're crazy enough to just do it (move),
it's something you can look back on and say "glad I did." At least in my
experience it has been.

It's also one of those things where if you really don't have much to "lose,"
there's a lot of room for gain. Moving, yeah, expensive. Getting robbed, yeah,
sucks. Cost of living, yeah, ridiculous.

But, I've viewed the experience as an extremely valuable extension of my
University education. I've learned a lot: much more than I thought possible
from the random spattering of techie-events I've attended. OSMCS 2007 is
pretty much the reason I implemented Drupal on my site. :) And the social
network here really is great.

So while I'm not endorsing a full-fledged "move" to SV for startuppers, it
_is_ the 21st Century. Travel. Experience life while you're young and can have
fun.

After I founded my LLC, I "moved" it from Arizona to Utah (very temporary
stopover there) to Cali in its first year. The portable nature of a web
business has been one of the greatest things about the work. So my advice is:
either go where you can participate in the synergy or go out and create some
on your own.

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mikeryan
It seems like there are some numbers there but w/o some key intersections.

For example CA is NOT just silicon valley, there's a large startup community
in LA. Does the LA ventures bring SV down for the CA totals?

Also it would be interesting to also cross reference this with size of
acquisition. Are acquisition's larger in SV?

Finally from looking at these it also appears that being in some sort of tech
corridor is beneficial.

Same list sorted by acquisition rate.

The top 8 or so have large tech areas, VA and MD I'm assuming are going to be
more gov't and defense related and then a huge decline as you get into the
sticks.

WA 8.20%

CA 6.90%

NJ 6.60%

TX 5.90%

CO 5.30%

MA 5.20%

IL 5.00%

NY 4.90%

VA 4.30%

MD 4.30%

GA 1.70%

PA 1.50%

AZ 1.30%

FL 1.20%

NC 1.20%

So it looks like there is at least some value in being in tech related areas.

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pxlpshr
I think what's important to remember too is that investment flows like water
in the Valley. In places like Texas for example, we're not that lucky so
'startups' (which half likely never make it into CrunchBase), typically turn
into very profitable small web-businesses because we don't have the same
access to capital to go after the 'long tail'. We're forced to find revenue
early, often at the expense of rapid & insane growth that results in big
liquidity events. (usually b/c consumer web guys here are bootstrapping or
operating on small angel money)

