
Austria - There are startups in them there mountains - pmjordan
http://uk.techcrunch.com/2009/06/19/austria-there-are-startups-in-them-there-mountains/
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davidw
Austria, in some ways, strikes me as being more on the 'Oregon' side of things
(as per this comment: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=664710> ) - it's a
very pleasant, livable place, where things generally work pretty well, and
people mostly lead quiet, happy lives. On the other hand, since things are
'pretty good', I also got a bit of a feeling of "don't rock the boat".

In any case, I always find it difficult to comment on Austria as I never
learned the language or felt very connected to things the way I do in Italy.

Oh ,and if you want pictures, here's a nice (live) one of the town I used to
do some work in: <http://www1.tirol.gv.at/luft/downloads/KOGLMOOS.JPG>

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mallipeddi
How's Italy in terms of internet startups, geek culture, etc? Never really
come across Italian tech startups in the news.

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dantheman
I believe Balsamiq is from Italy: <http://www.balsamiq.com/>

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davidw
Another couple that come to mind: <http://www.funambol.com/>

<http://www.sourcesense.com/en/home>

Basically, though, "Italy" is not a great place for startups, do to the poor
business environment. On the other hand, both historically, and currently,
Italy has produced smart people way out of proportion to its size.
Unfortunately, many of them have had to go elsewhere to really do their best
work, like this guy:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federico_Faggin>

He went to the University of Padova. Another famous guy who spent a lot of
time here was Galileo, who said he spent the happiest years of his life here.

I know plenty of geeks here, too. When I came here in 2000, I really didn't
miss San Francisco in terms of having people to talk geek with. On the other
hand, I did enjoy the fact that there were plenty of actual girls, that not
everyone worked for a tech company, and that there were children and old
people, rather than just 20-somethings. I like it here, but I will repeat that
Italy is a terrible place to do business because of the bureaucracy.

