

Don’t believe the Silicon Valley hype - mdhayes
http://venturebeat.com/2012/10/20/dont-believe-the-hype-silicon-valley-is-not-the-be-all-end-all-for-tech-companies/

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KirinDave
Am I the only person who reads articles like these and gets the suspicion that
this is less about how great Austin is (and it is a great city with some top-
notch hackers living there), but basically a thinly veiled advertising
opportunity for a software company that is trying to link its success to a
larger (and largely disconnected) issue?

I'm not even sure who the audience of this is. Investors? I doubt any savvy
VB-reading investors are unaware that there are great technology companies in
Austin, New York, Portland, Chicago, and many other cities. In fact, the
author appears a little out of the loop by talking about "The Valley" when
businesses have been heading north to the Peninsula for years now.

~~~
ChuckMcM
It isn't all that thinly veiled is it? Its a recruiting pitch, the message is:
'cost of living is lower', 'opportunities are plentiful', 'traffic is better',
and 'there is hip culture here too'. It is targeted at folks who are working
in the Bay area and hate the commute and high cost of living but feel trapped
because it is the 'place to be.' The goal being to get those people to
consider working outside the Bay Area.

The bottom line is that there are lots of places to work, they aren't all like
the Bay Area but they don't have to be.

~~~
chiph
Austin dweller here -- I assure you the traffic is NOT better here. Ranked 8th
worst in the nation.

> If you are not aligned with one of the fashionable templates, your mojo in
> the Valley can quickly whither.

I observed this at SXSW last year. It was Elevator Pitch Bingo, with every
presentation being some combination of Social, Mobile, Coupon, Local, and
"your friends". Very few of the pitches strayed outside that subset.

~~~
wh-uws
Austin resident from Atlanta who has lived in San Francisco.

Yes it it is.

In Austin if there is a jam you can go a few blocks over and avoid it.

In SF or Atlanta alot of times you're fucked because this is the only road
that goes where you want :/

~~~
pbiggar
On the other hand, in SF you can commute by bike. I'm told that's not viable
in Austin.

~~~
wh-uws
If you live and work downtown or near UT's campus it is.

If not then you are quite right its not.

~~~
a5seo
i live 2 mi west of ut/downtown, and i disagree. i gave up cycling when i
moved here from the Valley. :/

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billirvine
> I feel it’s actually a competitive advantage > to build startups outside of
> Silicon Valley

In some ways this is true. We're in Scottsdale, AZ and have lured two senior
people _from_ SV. Granted, they admitted to some irritation with the SV
culture, it wasn't really hard. But the incredibly lower cost of having a
business here means were capable of offering fair market salaries, not typical
low salaries + equity of most SV startups.

While the talent pool is smaller, the competition for that talent is almost
nonexistent... so hiring was easier to some degree.

And if you play golf... well...

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dotBen
_guess-post=puff-piece-for-his-company_ issue aside, the article is kinda just
stating the obvious... which is that you should geographically place your
startup where it makes most based on the type of company you are building.

Many folks are already living in SF/Bay Area and start their company without
thinking that maybe it would be better to do it elsewhere.

I live in SF yet my own startup, WP Engine, is based in Austin because we're
very operations and server orientated. I wouldn't start that kind of company
in the Bay Area as there's just no advantage. We now have some Marketing and
Strategy presence here, but operations remains firmly in Austin.

Equally, I personally wouldn't put a heavily social-orientated company in
Austin as there are many important partners you need to get chummy with to
succeed who are based in SF/Bay Area.

It's just about weighing up what labor and partners you need, and putting your
company where it needs to be. Not everyone can do that (family ties, visas,
etc) but if you're already in the Bay Area it does make sense to consider
whether moving out would benefit your startup.

~~~
kkowalczyk
"as there's just no advantage".

So, orders of magnitude more top notch engineers is not an advantage?

An order of magnitude more VC firms is not an advantage?

The existence of YC is not an advantage?

Order of magnitude more tech oriented events and meetups is not an advantage?

Maybe you meant "for me, personally, for my very specific business, there's no
advantage" but maybe you shouldn't make sweeping statements based on what
seems like a strongly held opinion and not a reasoned position.

To be clear: I'm not saying that Bay Area is the only place to start a
successful startup. Clearly, it isn't.

But just as clearly Bay Area is an epicenter of startups that generates
disproportionately large number of successes, both gigantic (which Austin tech
company is on the list of 500 biggest US companies, next to Google, Apple,
Oracle, Yahoo?) and small.

So either we have some unexplained phenomena that distorts the probability of
success here or there are very real advantages to being here.

~~~
dotBen
Well, you chopped off half of what I said and miss-quoted me in the process. I
said there was no real advantage to starting an operations/infrastructure-
focused company in SF Bay Area. I pointed out that for social, in particular,
SF/SV is totally high value.

But, back to operations-orientated (eg infrastructure, etc) startups:

 _So, orders of magnitude more top notch engineers is not an advantage?_

Nope, because such companies have a greater reliance on sysadmins, devops and
tech support folks. And there is more talent on that front in Austin (for
reasons explained in the OP) than in SF/SV. Also there's no point having an
order of magnitude of engineers in SF/SV if you can't afford to hire them. I'm
not going to reveal our wage levels but like-for-like they're probably 50-66%
that of Bay Area and still highly skilled.

 _An order of magnitude more VC firms is not an advantage?_

Nope, cos Sand Hill Road will still invest in Austin based companies.

 _The existence of YC is not an advantage?_

Nope, YC is nothing to me. I'll never participate as I'm a 31 year old with
going on 14 years experience of the industry and been involved in several
exits. I'm not a candidate YC entrepreneur.

 _Order of magnitude more tech oriented events and meetups is not an
advantage?_

Well, I live in SF so I go all the awesome events and still benefit from being
in Austin. What they don't tell you is once your company takes off and you
have $MM revenue and a huge team of employees you end up going to less events
and start focusing internally.

 _Maybe you meant "for me, personally, for my very specific business, there's
no advantage" but maybe you shouldn't make sweeping statements based on what
seems like a strongly held opinion and not a reasoned position._

No, I'm saying for most non-social, non-software-pure-plays, it's a big
advantage to get out of Bay Area. I'm sure Austinites would argue further than
that. It's not just for me.

 _which Austin tech company is on the list of 500 biggest US companies, next
to Google, Apple, Oracle, Yahoo?_

Not sure about Yahoo! (and couldn't care less about Yahoo either) but all of
them and Facebook have significant presences in Austin. To answer you
question, though, Dell is. I'm not saying that's particularly sexy but you
asked the question. I'm not also not sure what your point is here or how it
related to startups?

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johnrob
The author still thinks that you need to pack it up and go somewhere to
succeed. That message sidesteps the real debate: whether you can "stay home"
with your startup. Most people that are willing to move end up in Silicon
Valley.

~~~
dasil003
> * Most people that are willing to move end up in Silicon Valley*

What basis do you have for that claim?

