

Ask PG: What are the startup hubs outside of the US? - getp

PG, you mention that there are 5-6 startup hubs worldwide. I think you mentioned Silicon Valley and Cambridge. Where are the other 3-4? Are they too in the US?
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ardit33
"followed by Cambridge/Boston" -- really? When I lived there, it was very very
hard to find technical people that were not "corporate drones". I new maybe of
only one or two startup (I am not sure they ended up anywhere). Most other
companies are "enterprise oriented", such as VM-ware types.

I remember attending few session at an incubator close to MIT campus. The
speeches were given for people that had build products like "scanners" for
airports, and government etc.. not software oriented One thing I remember,
this guy from HBS, with a very smug attitude ( maybe b/c he got into haavad he
thought he was better than everybody). Not a hacker friendly atmosphere at
all. Most people there were the "business" types, that had "ideas" and
buzzwords, but very low on concrete implementation and treated technical
skills just as a commodity that could bought off in India.

Boston is not "eccentric" and "whacky" enough to support an environment with
lots of startups with crazy and novel ideas. Here is few facts:

You don't see naked people in the streets on Boston's fairs. It is mostly
family/9-5-er or young students, which tells you about the general population
of the place. If you are in your mid 20s, and out of school, it is not a good
place to be.

You can't buy alcohol on Sundays You can't have wine/beer in a coffee place
(Puritanism at max)

Most coffee/food places around Harvard sq. and Davis sq (the artsy part)
closed by MIDNIGHT!!! WTF? Most good programmers I know are most efficient at
midnight, and having things/places to get "fuel", (coffee and food) and some
re-energizing is very important.

For many reasons, I think NYC would be a better place for a startup, if it
wasn't so damn expensive, which kills ideas that have no business model right
away. But as a place is very vibrant, lots of stuff to do, good looking women,
and lots of money around, which are motivators for people to try harder and
make it happen.

The only thing that the Boston/Cambridge are has is it's student population.
-- which not surprisingly moves out somewhere else after school, and that it
is a very walk-able city. You can walk to places, take the T (subway), which
is very cool.

Personally, I like SF a lot, but I would never live in the South Bay. All
those seas of parking lots and the "drive everywhere" culture is very
depressing and soul drenching. Efficient for big corporations like HP and
Yahoo, but I can't see it being good for a small start up. My preference for
startups: SF beats them all. NYC second (if it wasn't so damn expensive), but
it has bonus point for being so close to the old media advertising, then
Cambridge/Boston (for having so many college kids around).

I think, Eastern Europe is going to become more prominent in the IT world. You
have lots of smart and well educated people at sciences, still cheap, and with
a good sense of entrepreneurship (unlike India or China, which see life more
as a career, eastern europeans are new to capitalism, and view this time as a
great opportunity). It will take a decade or so, but you will see more things
coming out from places like Hungary, Croatia, Romania etc. I doubt it will
ever be a single large European "hub".

Edited for spelling, and adding some content.

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kingnothing
They serve beer and wine in coffee shops in California?

Strange.

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ardit33
Yes, good wine, beer, and Soju cocktails. And you can even drink it outside
(if a coffee place has tables outside).

Plus, you can go with shorts at work, it's ok to wake up late, and sometimes
work from home, as long as you get you sh!t done.

Plus, plenty of free food and drinks on the kitchen.

And plenty of things like that, that you just wont find in 99% of the
companies on the East Coast.

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pg
Not including China and India (which I don't know well enough to talk about),
roughly: SV, Boston, {Seattle, Austin, NYC, London}.

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fauigerzigerk
If you're in europe, London is definately the place to be.

But bring a big suitcase, pack a suit and a tie and stuff the remaining space
with money ;-)

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getp
You've just mentioned my reservation about London: because cost of living - a
startup's main costs in the beginning - is so much higher than the rest of
Europe, your increased burn rate would have to be justified by increased
opportunities. Or are all startup hubs expensive to live in?

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pg
No. London shares with NYC the problem of being a big city and thus expensive
to live in. Some of the other places are quite cheap. SV is. SF is expensive,
but SV is a huge expanse of cheap, month-to-month apts.

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axiom
Waterloo, Ontario.

The University of Waterloo has a policy that any IP developed by profs or grad
students is owned by them rather than the university. In addition Waterloo was
the first school to do co-op in engineering when it was founded in 1957 (and
still has the largest co-op program in the world.) This adds up to an ungodly
number of startups coming outof Waterloo. Something like 10-15% of all
startups in Canada.

The UW computer science school is actually named after David Cheriton, the
Waterloo grad who introduced Sergey and Larry to investors, and made a few
billion out of his stake in Google. More damningly perhaps, Microsoft hires
more engineers from Waterloo than anywhere else :)

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chaostheory
"The University of Waterloo has a policy that any IP developed by profs or
grad students is owned by them rather than the university."

wow - that's almost unheard of at any good university in the US

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falsestprophet
I heard this is still the case in California by state law. Are there any other
places where professors own all of there IP?

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far33d
I asked this a while ago... here's the responses:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43195>

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mikhailfranco
Don't forget the original Cambridge, it's especially good for biotech.

Mik

P.S. Cambridge MA was renamed from Newtowne in 1638 as a publicity stunt when
Harvard was formed

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cglee
Beijing - home to Sina, Sohu, Google China, IBM Software Lab, Microsoft and
two world class universities (Tsinghua and Beijing University). There are also
tons of smaller startups started by both native Chinese entrepreneurs as well
as foreigners. The energy level is incredible there.

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chaostheory
my only concern with Bejing as opposed to Shanghai is how well they enforce
certain laws (since it is the capital). Granted fighting corruption is one
thing, but the better they enforce laws like censorship (that hinder
creativity), the worse for business in general...

Look at Singapore (which is the model that China eventually wants to be for
better or worse)... it's so repressed and 50's clean that you have natives
with masters degrees who don't know how to have sex (no I am not making this
up - this was news five years ago).

Singapore offsets its population and innovation problem through gov sponsored
immigration (typically favoring the west) and a laissez faire attitude on
taboo industries like biotech (an attitude that China shares).

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icey
Shanghai is an enormous startup hub.

Bangalore and Mumbai (formerly Bombay) are also quite large from what I
understand, but I haven't dealt enough with that market to know exactly how
large they are.

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carter
Hosting a lot of startups doesn't turn a particular town or region into a
startup hub. I don't know China well to talk about it, but I've never heard
about cool successful startups in China. Maybe it's like here, in
Academgorodok, Russia: a lot of IT companies, but they all are outsourcers or
small players. Have you ever heard about startup from Academgorodok?

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garbowza
What about the top few in the US. Of course Silicon Valley is tops, followed
by Cambridge/Boston. But after that, perhaps: Boulder, Los Angeles, New York,
Austin, Seattle.

Any other votes?

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icey
The D.C. area has a pretty healthy startup scene.

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kmt
I'm in the DC area. I can't really say I notice much startup vibe. Anyone
interested in getting in touch?

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cstejerean
I know that several countries have tried to replicate the Silicon Valley model
to various degrees of success. I think by far Silicon Valley is at the top of
the list with the others lagging far behind but I can't think of where in the
world there would be good startup hubs.

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lsemel
NYC is getting pretty good startup vibe. Check out www.alleyinsider.com,
www.nextny.org, and a bunch of startup-related Meetups.

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run4yourlives
I gotta put Vancouver BC on that list. There are way too many startups coming
from there not to make mention of it.

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kingnothing
How is Chicago?

I would expect it to be a great city, since it's 24/7 and has a huge finance
industry.

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brianmckenzie
Calling Chicago a 24-hour city is overstating the case a little bit. There is
some startup activity there, though.

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prakash
Bangalore.

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anupamkapoor
could you mention a few places to check out the startup action ?

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pramodbiligiri
Attend the BarCamp, in November I think.

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rodrigo
Anybody from Mexico?

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ptn
Maybe Japan?

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chaostheory
I could be wrong, but based on my personal experience Japanese culture at
large frowns heavily at risk (especially if you've already failed once).
People tend to look down on you unless you work for big respectable company
'x' with respectable title 'y'. Not to mention it's very difficult living on
the cheap in Japan. You'll have much better luck in NY...

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maurycy
London?

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sharpshoot
London

