

Want more startup hubs? Show us your faces - silvia77
http://startupsrule.com
If you want to make more startup hubs around the world, you need each city's local heros to show their faces to early-stage entrepreneurs.<p>http://startupsrule.com
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silvia77
Local investors and successful entrepreneurs: the early-stage entrepreneurs in
your cities need you now more than ever. We need you to take your vision, put
it on the ground, and carry your city and your followers up with you.

We need you to be our heroes.

Go with your associates and assistants to local events. Their eyes and ears
aren’t trained like yours to find insane talent and bigtime ideas. They can’t
inspire us with their experience and insight like you can.

We need your perspective and physical presence to find the best your city has
to offer and to help us bust through the brick walls that are stacked in front
of us.

Give us your presence at one event each week at a bar down your street. We
need your instant and honest feedback. When you’re there to give it, you will
make our ideas, our companies, and your city better, faster.

To be clear, this isn’t charity work. Being on the ground floor again will
remind you why you got into this business in the first place (or, maybe, why
you should get out). If all you think about is dollars, I bet you’ll find
companies to advise and invest in that no one else has heard about yet.

But all money aside, do you believe your city can be home to the next company
to shake up the world?

If you want to make your city into a true startup hub, you need to show us
your face.

You may never write a check to a local startup, but we will never forget those
who shook our hand and told us what we needed to hear first, even if you
reject our ideas because our market, the team, or the traction isn’t right.

This is, as David Lee said last week, “a pay-it-forward business.” If you pay
one night forward to your followers, your company, and your city, each one
will give more to you than you can possibly imagine.

Ron Conway is a hero to Silicon Valley. Fred Wilson is a hero to New York.

Who are the heroes of your startup community?

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silvia77
Every startup hub needs three heroes: an investor, an entrepreneur, and a
political advocate.

Silicon Valley has 2/3 (investor and entrepreneur) and so does New York
(investor and mayor).

What other cities have good combinations?

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JimEngland
Building a successful startup hub in most cities is extremely difficult. That
certifiable, go-to “hero” as mentioned in the article just doesn’t exist in
most places. In fact, if our standard of hero is Ron Conway or Fred Wilson,
the rest of the country is screwed.

Being based in Cleveland right now, I have met scores of people who are very
enthusiastic about building a startup community. However, everyone I’ve met in
Cleveland is new to the game with only one or two startups under their belt.
The vast majority of startups are extremely early stage, and I could list the
number of strong, successful technology startups on one hand. There is nobody
who could step up to become a hero, as that level of experience just simply
isn’t here.

I believe that there is strength in numbers, however. A real sense of
ownership in the direction of the city is starting to take place with the
entrepreneurs in Northeast Ohio, mostly centered around the programming meetup
groups. This grassroots-style startup culture takes time and is not as flashy
as a big name hero, but it’s a start.

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bmcmanus
Great to hear about the culture in Northeast Ohio, Jim. It definitely is a
start. I think that "hero" should be taken as a wide-reaching term. Ron Conway
and Fred Wilson are rockstar examples, but the main point is that early stage
entrepreneurs need to put faces to success stories for a startup hub to be
healthy. Those success stories can be as simple as getting one startup off the
ground and operating it as a break-even business.

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mattblalock
I've been trying for months to find fellow startups or entrepreneurs in my
city. I've come to the conclusion there aren't any (or they're very good at
hiding). Silly, considering Wachovia, Hanes/Sara Lee, RJ Reynolds, Wrangler,
Krispy Kreme, and about a million other big companies are based here in
Winston-Salem or very close by... Redhat is based about 30 minutes away, as
well as a bunch of large tech companies (in Raleigh).

There's even this silly group that tries to connect business and creative
people, but their events are so terrible I can't bring myself to go... think
"The development of Disney as a cultural phenomena"... and I know others feel
the same. I've offered to help them, offered event ideas, but these folks
think they know it all. Too bad the time I did go, there were only maybe a
dozen or so people there, all mostly employees of this partnership group.

So if there are any startups in North Carolina (especially the Triad) raise
your hands, lets buy each other a beer soon.

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thaumaturgy
Three words: network, network, network. You'll never find anyone with a
printed ad or by posting flyers (I know, I've tried that too).

I'm gradually turning my small town into a startup hub, and it's great. So far
my efforts have helped launch a co-working space and have helped a bunch of
creative and technical people meet each-other. There are some money people in
my area too, and they should be getting interested pretty soon.

Even if those meeting suck, go to them. Get to know anybody worth knowing.
Suggest creating a new group or club (make sure it has a specific purpose and
some direction). Go to chamber of commerce mixers religiously -- even if the
first four send you home empty-handed, the fifth might get you a curious
entrepreneur. Pay close attention to the items in the local newspaper. Start
keeping a list of who the "movers and shakers" are in your area.

I wasn't real fond of the YC process, or of living in the Bay Area, and I
already had some things going here. So ... why not keep pushing things here
and create the environment I wanted?

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silvia77
Amen to that. Great stuff.

Just curious, in what part of the country is this small-town startup-hub?

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thaumaturgy
Grass Valley, California. Lots of trees, animals, great mountain biking,
starting point for this year's Amgen, and host to a number of technology
companies (including 2Wire, Spectrum Sensors & Controls, Grass Valley Group
(known for producing very high quality video control boards), and a number of
others, and formerly one of the original homes to Atari.)

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pclark
Am I the only one that thinks people should stop worrying about startup hubs
and focus more on making cool stuff?

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bmcmanus
Cool stuff always rules. The point is that timely, physical interaction
between talented hackers and the "heroes" that inspire them will lead to more
cool stuff being made even faster and more efficiently than ever before.

Thoughts?

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yobject
Someone needs to mention to startupsrule.com that they're using what appears
to be a istockphoto copyright. The earth photo in the center...still has the
watermark on it. not something you should be encouraging :)

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heromaeda
Want to meet anybody who wants to build a startup hub in Japan! contact me -
<http://hiromaeda.com>

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bmcmanus
You should get in touch with @jonnyli and @okuda_wiz

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quizbiz
If you are in Atlanta, I would love to learn from your experience and I know
many others that would say the same.

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bmcmanus
I have a few friends in Atlanta who love the growing scene there. What are you
up to in the area? I'd be happy to put you in touch to see if they can help.

If needed, my direct email is brendan [at] thestartupdigest [dot] com.

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silvia77
Cool. Do you know anyone there personally? Love to hear a first hand account
of what's going on in that scene.

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mikecane
In Ireland, there's Start VI: <http://startvi.com/>

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rcavezza
Well said Brendan!

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mattblalock
Agreed!

