
Colorado doesn’t need to replicate Silicon Valley - HeyLaughingBoy
https://www.sparkfun.com/news/2404
======
patrickg_zill
In the 60s or 70s, IBM made all their plastics, worldwide, for their machines
near Boulder, where SparkFun is based.

As a result of that, when IBM moved production elsewhere, much of the talent
stayed in the area - now there are a lot of high quality smaller companies
with injection molding and other plastics experience etc. in the area.

Another area in business where the high rents and "you need a VC" mentality
would have worked against real world success.

CO attracts high quality people - although the housing prices skyrocketing is
going to affect whether the younger people who are less financially
established, will come in the same numbers as before.

~~~
jdcarter
> although the housing prices skyrocketing is going to affect whether the
> younger people who are less financially established, will come in the same
> numbers as before.

But at least you can just go East here. The towns surrounding Boulder--
Superior, Louisville, Lafayette, Longmont, etc.--are great places to live,
costs are far lower than in Boulder proper, and your commute is still only
15-30 minutes. I live in Lafayette and commute into Boulder; it takes 20
minutes and it's mostly on 2-lane roads going past farmland.

And as an added bonus, when I'm missing a part for one of my electronics
projects, I can always stop by SparkFun. :)

~~~
davidw
It strikes me as something of an "own goal" that the "green belt" in Boulder
has had the effect of putting a lot of people in that area out of reach of
public transportation or bicycling as viable transportation options, requiring
more cars and parking and traffic and pollution. Instead of growing out a
little bit (god forbid they build 'up' or 'in'), people just drive _even
further_ out.

~~~
jdcarter
Agreed, I gave up on bicycling when I moved outside the Boulder green belt.
Boulder has a ton of cyclists but, for whatever reason, refuses to build
proper bike lanes. The major roads in/out of Boulder barely have shoulders in
places. California, by contrast, has proper bike lanes everywhere--seriously,
even Central Expressway in the bay area is safer to bike on than any of the
major roads going in/out of Boulder.

I switched to a motorcycle as a result, and while it doesn't have the health
benefits of bicycling, it's a good way to commute.

~~~
blackguardx
It must depend on where in Boulder you live and work. From my perspective in
South Boulder, there are many bike lanes and bike paths. I don't even have to
touch asphalt to get to work.

~~~
saryant
I started bike commuting to Pearl today from south Boulder and I never have to
go on a road.

~~~
davidw
Boulder's bike infrastructure is pretty good for the US. The week I spent
there, I got around by bike with no problems.

They've done a lot right there, it's the housing that's completely broken
thanks to people like Mr. "No more jobs":

[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/04/business/how-anti-
growth-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/04/business/how-anti-growth-
sentiment-reflected-in-zoning-laws-thwarts-equality.html?_r=0)

Having grown up in a place with its share of economic hard times, and having
lived in Italy for many years, the idea of "too many pesky jobs" is...
absolutely mind boggling. Like something from another planet.

~~~
saryant
That man is a colossal moron, which is part of why I love that article's line
about how he too is a transplant.

"I'm here! Lock the doors!"

------
davidw
> Boulder, CO

I don't know, that place has actually tracked SV in a lot of ways, from a good
university, to a concentration of smart people, to some good VC's, to being a
nice place, to ... rampant NIMBYism that has driven housing prices up to
nearly 700K (Zillow).

~~~
CPLX
Do any of you modern Colorado people have an opinion of Colorado Springs these
days for startups or tech or really anything?

I went to school there (CC) but that was back in the early 90's so I'm not
exactly up on things, but I've long considered reconnecting with the area,
finding an excuse to open a satellite office or something.

In my memory the Springs was pretty sleepy and outside of the small little
hippie commune liberal arts college was mostly comprised of retired or
military or both.

Does Colorado Springs figure at all in Colorado's business/tech scene?

~~~
shemnon42
I lived in COS for 15 years, and recently bailed and moved to Boulder.

COS had the good seeds of a tech hub prior to the dot com melt down. Lots of
cities did.

But what I think helped drain the potential was 9/11 and the uptick in defense
contracting. All the engineers went to one of several contractors and all the
non-engineers who would get involved in startups left town because they
couldn't find engineers who would take the risk.

It's a great town if you want to work on the fringes, or commute to Denver, or
work in government contracting. Since none of those three fit my needs I
packed it up and moved to the Broomfield corridor (I couldn't afford Boulder
proper).

------
rubiquity
Silicon Foo is a meme for non-technical types used to communicate some sort of
software renaissance by a city. It makes them picture the AmaGooFaceSofts of
the world opening up offices to rescue their economy. Or maybe they picture
the next UberLyftAirbnb will happen in Fooville.

Of course it makes us want to vomit because we take it literally and know that
isn't what's going to happen.

The Bay Area[0] is the Emperor of building software (business and consumer)
and it will always be that way. The Bay Area's primary business is the
building of software and thus software is created there for software companies
as well.

At the rest of the Silicon Hopefuls, just getting a handful of legit tech
companies that want to build software specific to that city's primary
economies (oil, real estate, defense contracting, lumber, etc.) would do A LOT
of good.

Disclaimer: I don't live in the Bay Area. I live in Silicon Foo where talented
software builders either run away or work remote for Bay Area companies.

0 - Citizens of other very large cities: please don't have your egos bruised.
Your cities matter, too. Ok, you know I'm really just talking to New Yorkers
who have a hard time not being the best at everything.

~~~
wamatt
Exactly. Just like Detroit will always be the global epicenter of the
automotive industry /s. A lot can change in 50 years.

~~~
dwyerm
Related:
[http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-t...](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-
the-most-common-job-in-every-state)

Maybe this is just a lot of lying with graphics, but it has always bothered me
that Colorado has been a tech center on and off for decades, while California
is nothing but truck drivers and secretaries. Yet it seems like Colorado is
the last place people look for tech talent.

~~~
jcfiala
Having worked here for the last two decades, since I arrived in '94, I've
never had real trouble finding a computer programming job.

(I don't count the time period when all I knew was Visual Basic and was re-
training in another language while job-hunting, because really, that was on
me.)

------
w00bl3ywook
Sparkfun has not had to compete talent just yet. Wait until the competition
for talent in Colorado reaches SV level. Sparkfun will have to stop relying on
"I want to work at a cool/fun/relaxed place badly" and start paying market
rates for talent. Take a look at their crazy application process. It's built
around how badly labor wants to work there. This strategy doesn't work in SV
anymore.. Good candidates want to get paid, not have "fun times" at work.
Sparkfun's talent strategy is built on concepts that are well over 15 years
old.

~~~
pdeuchler
I agree with this comment as it applies to the general tech ecosystem here,
but Sparkfun might actually be exempt from this because it is legitimately a
very cool place to just be around... But that said yeah, it is very apparent
that too many companies here are coasting on the general area's appeal. We're
just starting to hit the point where that won't cut it anymore, and I think a
lot of companies that have gotten by on quality talent at cut rate prices due
to the lack of competition and the inherent desirability of the area are in
for a serious rude awakening.

Salaries are already starting to rapidly increase (more than they already
were) in Boulder just with the announcement of companies like Google moving
large offices here and it's been very disconcerting to see companies resort to
the same tactics used by Bay Area companies to circumvent paying people
(company commuter busses so you can live in more affordable areas, $500 ski
passes instead of $5k raises, free food, etc etc). This area can't really even
bank on the usual scam of promising big exists since those are much more rare
in these parts. Watching the economics of the whole situation has been very
interesting, especially when you see that they're only going to make many of
the social problems we're dealing with much much worse.

------
jdcarter
I work at another Boulder company just down the road from SparkFun, also
founded by a CU student in his dorm room, which has been successful without VC
investment. Boulder is an odd hybrid of new tech companies and more
traditionally bootstrapped companies like SparkFun.

There's plenty of VC-funded startups in Boulder, too. The main pedestrian mall
downtown, Pearl Street, is flanked by tech companies on the 2nd/3rd floors,
above the retail shops. It feels quite similar to University Ave in Palo Alto,
back when I lived there in the 90's.

Perhaps the biggest difference is that where Silicon Valley is geographically
locked-in and there's no cheap office space to be had, in Boulder you can go
East a little bit and the price of office space drops dramatically. Taking
SparkFun as an example, it's not on Pearl Street, it's several miles outside
of town in an industrial park.

As such, Boulder gets to be both a micro-size Silicon Valley and a more normal
commercial environment as well. It's also just a great place to live, housing
costs are reasonable (relative to California anyway), there's tons to do, and
it's a good place to raise a family.

------
Balgair
Boo! No, don't move to Colorado! It's terrible here! Too much snow! White
people all the way to Nebraska! The views are over-rated! Skiing is too
expensive! Beer is all just hop-juice or Coors! Terrible food! Nothing but
Papa Jonh's and stoners! Stay Away!

~~~
ThomPete
What's wrong with white people?

~~~
amyjess
I'd say it goes hand in hand with the bit about "terrible food". OK,
"terrible" is hyperbolic, but I'm specifically avoiding places that are as
white as snow because of food.

I'm looking at moving, and one hard requirement for me is that the suburb I'm
moving to have an Asian population of at least 15%, specifically for food-
related reasons. I live in the northern suburbs of Dallas, which have fairly
high Asian populations. I want a large amount of Thai, Vietnamese, Japanese,
Korean, regional Chinese, Indian, etc. food wherever I live, and if a place is
90% white, I'm not going to get that. I'd also like a Hispanic population
above 15% too because I love me some tacos, but I'm willing to forego that as
long as a nearby suburb is >15% Hispanic.

I've narrowed down my search to the suburbs of Los Angeles and Las Vegas;
specifically, Torrance (or Irvine) and Spring Valley, respectively, and ethnic
makeup is one of my most important criteria.

------
pcarolan
I agree and like this article but the midwest needs to adopt a few things the
valley did right. 1) Hand out more equity to early employees and create a
flywheel of entrepreneurs who build and finance other businesses. 2) Get rid
of the non-compete culture. Standard form in Chicago is 18 months. This is
unenforceable in Cali. 3) Put value on youth. We still live under a
manufacturing seniority mindset. One woman once told me "I can't wait to turn
30 so I can be taken seriously". The midwest has all the talent and ingenuity
it needs. It has a unique perspective and is relatively inexpensive to live
in, but the rules need to be revised to favor competitiveness.

~~~
lotsofpulp
I think the social conservativeness of the Midwest is also a huge negative for
many.

~~~
pcarolan
Chicago is an oasis for that. Check it out if you haven't.

------
bkjelden
The Front Range isn't really part of the 'Heartland', unless your definition
is naively "all things not close to an ocean".

~~~
65827
Yeah midwesterners can fuck right off, Colorado wants nothing to do with that.
Heartland is like Ohio or something right?

------
miles_matthias
When I graduated with my CS degree, I knew I wanted to be a part of startups,
so I decided to move to either SF or Boulder. And I'm so, so, so glad I picked
Boulder.

My company operates in several cities and it's great to have options like SF,
NY, DC, etc. where there's a ton of activity and a ton of $$$, but most of the
time, we just don't need it. Most of the time we want a place to actually
enjoy our work. We frequent Boulder & Austin since we have investors in both
locations.

------
Mz
I don't think you need to replicate Silicon Valley. Why would you want to? It
has serious problems that are not going to be easily addressed.

Also, it isn't a given that money has to continue to concentrate in a few
places. This is not some force of nature we are watching. It is human
activity. Sure, human activity gets influenced by factors outside of our
control. It is easier to "go with the flow" of various things than to swim
upstream. But we have a lot more ability to choose to do something else if we
don't like how this is going than most creatures have.

I don't like how articles (like the Wired article that inspired this post)
just seem to presume all we can do is document the trend and make our peace
with accepting it. That is crazy. If people think this is a terrible,
corrosive trend, then why not write articles that give push back to the trend
(like this one does) instead of just documenting it like a runaway train we
cannot stop?

VCs can go invest money wherever they want. Rich people have far more mobility
than others. They don't have to limit themselves to a handful of places. Nor
are other people simply doomed to curry favor with them. Most of their so-
called _money_ isn't actually in the form of money per se. They own stocks or
real estate or whatever. Money has to circulate like blood in order to stay
alive. They need things to invest in. It isn't in their best interest to let
it sit in a vault rotting.

It is absolutely not a given that these trends have to continue in this same
direction. Humans can say "Oh, we don't like where our behavior is taking us.
Let's consider other options." It isn't a Greek Tragedy where the more you try
to resist your fate, the more doomed you are to entrench it as the only
option.

------
dalfonso
At the end of the day, it's about access to capital. My wild hypothesis is if
some angel investor said, "I'm going to invest 10 billion dollars in funding
startups but you have to relocate to Colorado/midwest/anywhere for the first 5
years", then in the next 5 years that city will definitely "have a prosperous
startup industry". Yes, you can be successful bootstrapping but it seems so
much easier once you have funds to use for hiring/marketing/scaling/etc.
(Note: I've never raised any amount of capital before.) In addition the "we've
raised money" badge also signals legitimacy to potential employees, customers,
partners.

~~~
kevinr
Friendly amendment: it's about access to capital relative to local costs.
Arguably OP's point is that he had access to enough capital relative to his
local costs in Colorado to afford to bootstrap, whereas he'd have needed VC to
hit the same ratio in the Valley. Turned out well for him, and has worked for
others like him.

"I'm going to invest 10 billion in startups but you have to relocate" is
basically what Tony Hsieh did in Las Vegas, and it... based on how rocky that
got, I think it's about more than _just_ access to capital.

------
got2surf
It begs the question of why we (generally) feel like tech startups need to
think/behave differently than traditional businesses.

"Startups" in the sense of new businesses have been around for centuries
(arguably longer). But recently, the popular image of most tech companies is
raising large amounts of money to grow/scale really quickly. If anything,
shouldn't the fact that engineers understand how to leverage technology lead
to higher profitability and lower need for capital than all the brick-and-
mortar businesses that came before us? Like the SparkFun founder says, _as an
engineer, I started a company that I knew how to build and implement on my
own_.

~~~
codingdave
It is mostly a question of terminology. Around here, "startup" is defined as
hyper-growth, because YC chose to define it that way and HN came from YC. In
other places, it can have a more flexible definition. So while most of the
audience here will absolutely agree that you don't need VCs or insane growth
to start a business, on HN, that would be coined as a "lifestyle" company, not
a "startup". (And in my mind, more power to anyone who goes that route.)

~~~
got2surf
Good point on the terminology. My main (and relatively early) experience has
been that there are good lessons to be learned from both sides (like
sustainable growth and profit models on the "non-startup" end, and rapid
innovation/marketing on the "startup" end)

------
Johnny555
_" In those beginning stages, I never would have been able to pay for
warehouse space in the Bay Area while waiting for investors to commit"_

You'd be crazy to start a warehouse _in_ Silicon Valley -- run your
development and operations there, but when you're ready to move out of your
garage into a real warehouse, put the warehouse (and product assembly) in
Tracy or someplace like that that's an hour's drive away and much more
affordable.

------
Apocryphon
If it's 100% employee owned, does that mean SparkFun is a co-op?

~~~
dsp1234
A cooperative[0] is usually operated and run for the mutual benefit of it's
members. So for example, a credit union co-op provides services by members,
and for members.

Since Sparkfun provides the majority of it's services to non-members, it's
unlikely that it would fit the bill of a co-op.

[0] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative)

~~~
unclesaamm
This isn't true -- there are worker cooperatives, where workers own the means
of production and sell the goods to others:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative)

Which isn't to say that Sparkfun is a coop -- I don't think it is, just a
bootstrapped company where the equity has stayed within the hands of
founders/employees.

------
MadManE
They don't need to, but Colorado, and Boulder in particular, is trying like
hell to do it anyway.

~~~
mojowo11
St. Louis here. The startup scene here are also trying to copy the Silicon
Valley model, instead of trying to be something unique and different. It is
frustrating.

------
robbyking
The headline posted here is misleading; the actual article says "Colorado
Doesn’t Need to Replicate Silicon Valley _to Have a Prosperous Startup
Industry_ "

------
jstueve
As a QA Engineer (living in Broomfield, 9 miles east), the number of cold
calls I am getting from recruiters for tech positions in Boulder is averaging
4/week. This number has been steadily rising the past 3 years. Boulder may not
be SV, but as Nate says, it doesn't have to be. It is it's own beast and it
is, by my eyes, succeeding.

~~~
65827
Yeah the startup scene is pretty rag tag and unprofessional in a lot of ways,
but in other ways it far exceeds any capabilities you'll find in California or
anywhere else for that matter. Boulder doesn't really need a model, they are
sort of pushing a bunch of envelopes uphill all on their own.

------
czbond
Related: I run an engineering team in Dallas, TX and moved to Colorado
recently. Where would you look for high quality, heavily growing firms in the
area? I'm only interested in running large teams - otherwise I get bored. Eg:
CTO or Managing Director style roles.....

~~~
hijinks
A lot Bay area startups have opened offices around the Boulder area. I'd look
there as a starting point if I were you. There's a big tech sector just south
of Denver but its mostly filled with more established type companies.

------
rollingpebbles
Especially not the Man Jose gender imbalance.

