

Silicon Valley Losing its Luster? - procyon
http://www.pehub.com/wordpress/?p=2721

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pg
If you decide where the entrepreneurial hot spots are by polling your site
visitors, what you get is a lot of data about where people wish they were.

The fact is, practically all startups need investors. Entrepreneurship means
more than web/software startups, of course, but for web/software startups, the
limiting reagent is investors with expertise and connections in that area. And
they are highly concentrated in Silicon Valley.

It doesn't matter how vibrant a place seems if it is missing the specific type
of expertise you need. So while Brazil, for example, may be a fine place for
some forms of entrepreneurship, it will have the same drawback as a home for
new tech startups that Silicon Valley would for, say, new fashion labels.

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dshah
Why is it that practically all startups need investors? Particularly
web/software startups?

Seems that more and more startups could be started with personal funding these
days and not really require outside funding.

~~~
pg
_Why is it that practically all startups need investors? Particularly
web/software startups?_

To cover the founders' living expenses while they build a product and get the
company to profitability. That's going to take a minimum of 6 months. More
often a year.

The other alternative would be to keep their jobs and do the startup on the
side. But taking that route means that (a) the startup happens much slower,
which can be dangerous if, as usual, there is someone else working on the same
idea, and (b) it's easy to let the startup slide, since it's only a side
project, and not the work that's paying your bills.

You can also look at the empirical evidence. Make a list of the 100 startups
you admire most. What percentage of them did it without investors?

The scary thing about that exercise is that startups done as side projects are
probably more numerous than those where the founders quit to work full-time on
the company. If this much larger pool produces such a tiny fraction of the
successes, the attrition rate must be appalling.

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projectileboy
Do unsupported statements seem more plausible when phrased as questions?

Will Minneapolis become the next hot spot for all-night heroin parties?

Film at 11.

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tectonic
<http://startupwarrior.com>

~~~
PaulGrahamBell
<http://startuphubs.com>

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mynameishere
_If I had to make one choice, Brazil._

California is about one generation away from being Brazil. At any rate, anyone
with an interest in South America knows that the best bet is Uruguay. Check
out the flag for starters:

<http://www.newspapercountry.com/Uruguay.png>

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wallflower
If you are considering Argentina, you can infer a lot about the Buenos Aires
tech scene from this:

[http://osdir.com/ml/culture.people.kragen.journal/2007-09/ms...](http://osdir.com/ml/culture.people.kragen.journal/2007-09/msg00000.html)

~~~
helveticaman
Argentina? BA is nice, I agree, but the economy goes down the drain every
twelve years. I'm not talking about US-style depressions with lost jobs and
protests; I'm talking starving children, a different president every week, and
politicians escaping in helicopters. Of course, if you arrive right after a
flush, everything's cheap. But do you really want to deal with an economy as
chaotic as your startup's?

I know of businesses that are really reluctant to do business in Argentina
because of government corruption, particularly mining companies.

Brazil sounds better, but it isn't SV.

If I had to be in Latin America, I'd be (OK, I am) in Santiago. The country is
run by engineer entrepreneurs, taxes are really low, the economy is very well
managed (moreso than that of US, for instance) and labor is relatively cheap.
But, having tried to do a startup here, I can see why SV is the place to be.
You just don't hit other uranium atoms often enough.

