

Outside the Echo Chamber: Growing A Startup In New Hope, PA - crad
http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/07/outside-the-echo-chamber-growing-a-startup-in-new-hope-pa/

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rmorrison
It seems everybody believes they live in an above average location for
startups, similar to how everybody believes they are smarter than average.

I grew up 10 minutes from Hew Hope, PA, then moved to Philadelphia, and
recently moved to San Francisco. New Hope is nice, so is Philly, but they're
simply in a different league. Yet, at entrepreneur events people were excited
about the prospects for becoming the next Silicon Valley.

If you don't believe this, just goto one VLAB or Hackers and Founders in the
valley to realize the difference.

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JangoSteve
_We employ 80+ people – most of them local to New Hope._

So they're just up to $2mil in revenue and they have 80+ employees? Seems like
he mentions the number of employees they have like it's a good thing. I'd be
doing everything I could to avoid that stat in the article.

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gojomo
From the chart, it appears to have recently reached $2 million _per month_. On
an annual basis, $300K revenues/employee and improving isn't so bad.

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hvs
I don't think anyone has ever said that it is _impossible_ to have a startup
outside of a tech hub, just that it is orders of magnitude more difficult
outside of them.

And as JangoSteve mentions, that revenue looks much less impressive when you
see that they have 80+ employees.

I wish them the best of luck, as I like to see software companies thriving
outside of the valley (no offense to any one there, I just happen to like
Chicago), but the article reads more like "this is the best we can do outside
of the big tech hubs" rather than an inspirational story.

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lg
In pg's equation for a startup town (great university + rich people), New Hope
definitely has rich people. It's where my parents took me when we wanted to go
someplace.

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skmurphy
We would not be surprised to see a new "standard" product business in New Hope
--a furniture maker, plumbing fixtures, etc... The last two decades have
steadily eroded any significant technology barrier to a software/SaaS
business. If MyYearbook can spot an unserved market opportunity they can grow
a software/SaaS business in New Hope.

