
HubSpot CEO: We would've struggled on the West Coast - replicatorblog
http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/blog/startups/2013/05/hubspot-silicon-valley-boston-marketing.html?page=all
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api
It's an interesting point. You could say the same about Austin, Chicago,
Atlanta, Charlotte, Toronto, etc., maybe even Seattle and Vancouver, not to
mention any number of smaller towns with a startup culture presence.

I'd add two more bad things about the valley: faddish thinking / groupthink,
and completely insane costs. I can only speak second-hand, but the Valley
strikes me as very much a bubble with its own internal echo chamber and
groupthink. If you're in the Valley, you are likely to get sucked into chasing
trends that everyone else is chasing instead of finding a unique niche
nobody's thought about. And the cost of living is simply absurd: think
Manhattan except car ownership is an almost must-have.

I also hear that the availability of funding in the Valley is overstated.
Early-round funding is scarce, and funding might be even more faddish than the
startups themselves.

The advantage of the valley though is the talent pool. It's fresh, large, and
highly skilled, though perhaps a bit fickle as the interview mentions.

Finally, having lived in Boston/Cambridge, I can mention one distinct
_disadvantage_ of that particular place: it's somewhat antisocial and has a
conservative investor climate. I found it a somewhat stifling place to live.
People don't have friends. They have colleagues. And investors there tend to
be more risk-averse than California.

If I wanted a big startup hub that is not the Valley I would honestly pick
Austin: lowish cost of living, lots of tech talent, nicer climate than the
Northeast, and more fun than Boston. New York might be a possibility too, as
it's more fun and diverse than Boston and probably less conservative.

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mjn
> And the cost of living is simply absurd

I'd agree compared to many places, but Boston is hardly cheaper than the
Valley! It's cheaper than SF, but more expensive than Mountain View, San Jose,
Santa Clara, etc. At least as far as apartment rentals go; I haven't looked at
how purchasing a house would compare.

There are Boston suburbs which are cheaper, but unlike in the Valley, there is
not much going on there. The South Bay has a bunch of tech companies (Apple,
nVidia, etc.), community spaces like the Hacker Dojo, coworking spaces like
NextSpace, etc. The parts of Boston where you can find an apartment for San-
Jose-level rents don't really have anything like that.

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prsutherland
No tech companies in the suburbs of boston? There is Autodesk, RedHat, EMC and
many others.

Edit: For a more complete list, see:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_Route_128#The_hig...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_Route_128#The_high-
tech_region)

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ErikAugust
Yeah - that person doesn't know what they are talking about. Route 128 rivals
the Valley in that sense... just about anyone that grew up in that economy
knows that.

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jkuria
Incidentally Bill Gates chose not to move Microsoft to the Valley (from
Albuquerque, New Mexico) because he saw the way people changed jobs each year
and figured this would not be good for his young company (From Paul Allen's
book 'Idea Man')

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platypii
Maybe Microsoft would have some more interesting products if they had more
employee churn...

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yekko
No employee churn == horrible code. I'm living it right now. They do not
understand best practice... It's like they live in a bubble.

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michaelochurch
Too much employee churn == horrible code.

Launch-and-flee, fast firing, brutal deadlines, and corporate behaviors that
don't instill loyalty, all are pretty bad for code quality.

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ErikAugust
Boston suits HubSpot as a company. Because it is such a big, diverse college
town they have been able to hire great, hard-working sales and CRM people
right out of school, which is truly that company's core competency.

It's not their engineering that has made them successful but a combination of
sales/CRM and evangelical style marketing. I'm not sure SV could provide that
- but please correct me if I'm wrong.

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jusben1369
This feels like there is definitely a bit of a chip on his shoulder about the
Bay Area. Having said that, I think he makes valid points. Mostly around
employee retention and loyalty. Boston is also really "two cities". Once you
get on the other side of the 128 people are the opposite of transient. They're
there for life. What's interesting to me is that we're even having this
discussion. For the longest time Boston was the Number 2 after the Bay Area.
It has really slipped though relative to New York, Austin and other secondary
markets over the last 5 years. It's a "no nonsense" place (the weather and
puritan streak will do that to you) that values intellectualism. So it's no
wonder with the explosion of mobile and consumer/media apps it's fallen behind
and still focuses on B2B and medical.

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spartango
This comes across strangely for me. As as a founder of a startup who moved
from the west coast to the east coast, I certainly didn't do so to be a big
fish in a small pond. Personally, I find that a bit of a copout--if what you
are doing is awesome you'll work hard to make it work even in a tough
environment. That said, I suppose it objectively makes sense.

I moved my project to the east coast for completely different reasons,
primarily to make good use of the strong medical community in the Boston area.
The advisors and collaborators we have here are amazing, and they understand
some of the special challenges of being a medical/life science company (things
like scientific validation).

Sure, you can do arbitrage with geographically distributed startup resources,
but imo it's more important to focus on expertise and mindsets pertinent to
your work.

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yekko
We need more Texas startups!

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michaelochurch
Honestly, I think that VC-istan companies do a horrible job of instilling
loyalty. Equity percentages are low enough that I'd rather take a full salary.
True business partnership is worth going down in salary to "buy in", but if
you don't get to know the cap table or at least know that there isn't some VP
of NTWTFK (Non-Technical Who The Fuck Knows) getting 20x as much, then what's
the point? You're getting paid in lottery tickets, you can be cliffed, the
offer may be rescinded if you start asking about liquidation preferences, etc.

Also, these companies generally have tight deadlines (because they grew too
fast and blew up their burn rate) and can never invest any time in doing
things right, much less employee mentoring. With no loyalty to employees,
these startups get none back.

Finally, when you're forced to implement bad practices (technical debt plus
unhealthy work conditions) to meet these deadlines, you want to _run_ as soon
as you hit a macroscopic target, in order to (a) cash in while there's a glow
on your face, making that social bump permanent, and (b) avoid suffering or
being embarrassed when things start to fall to pieces.

