
A Change of Scenery for Startups - HillaryBriss
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-04-28/a-change-of-scenery-for-startups
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pducks32
I'm a college student in Silicon Valley who's originally from downtown
Chicago. When I moved here it was not the place I expected. Maybe SF is
different or Palo Alto but where I am I just see regular families who are
struggling to come to terms with how their communities have changed since the
70s. It's not all negative in my experience; many of them are quite proud of
the tech companies. But it hurts to see so many people struggling. I saw it in
Chicago, but what I see in San Jose is so much worse. I love this Valley but I
just wish companies worked a little harder with local governments to
brainstorm solutions. It's really unfortunate.

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sjg007
People need to vote. There's more of us than them.

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philsnow
people need to run for local office. if "there's more of us than them", then
it should be easy to get sympathetic people into local office and then state
office.

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warcher
A startup theme that I'm seeing more and more often is domestic outsourcing,
where the executive/biz-side team is in SF and the engineering team is
someplace more economical, but still in the states. A tougher lift for sure,
but you could potentially get the best of both worlds-- SF connections and
cheaper labor elsewhere.

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jlarocco
It's strange that so few startups have tackled the problem of remote working.

For software development, especially, there's really no reason a whole company
couldn't be entirely "remote", except that the tooling around it isn't very
good.

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user5994461
Software development for large enough projects is all about communication.

A full remote team has a big handicap on that.

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aantix
Linux kernel, Rails, pretty much any high profile open source project is fully
distributed, yet them maintain code quality that is world class relative to
most private projects?

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taway_1212
I'm guessing in case of these projects you get lots of high caliber, motivated
volunteers. In case of a startup you just have a couple people, and they would
probably rather hack on the Linux kernel as well rather than on the founder's
technically mundane app :)

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watwut
That is basically saying that startups employees are irresponsible and lazy
:). While some are truly like that, I think that majority really is not.

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jlarocco
It can't happen fast enough, IMO. The mono-culture around Silicon Valley and
startups could really use some fresh viewpoints and new ideas.

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walshemj
For example?

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trustfundbaby
That you don't always have to raise shittons of Cash to "do" a startup, or
that you should have to show a path to profitability early on to get funding
... for example

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danielrhodes
That makes no sense. You raise money to explore new markets and not worry
about profitability right away, but instead focus on growth. But if your unit
economics are not good and will never be good, why would anybody want to
invest?

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mbesto
I advise a lot of PE investors who buy tech companies that aren't in top tier
cities. Most of these companies are based outside of the top tier cities and
interestingly all of them actually make money and very profitable. The last 8
cities I've been in where these companies exist: Tampa, Buffalo, Denver, New
Orleans, Atlanta, Austin, Knoxville, Birmingham.

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Xcelerate
Curious, as a Knoxville resident, which companies? (If you're free to say.)

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cmahler7
As a younger millennial I have no desire to move to silicon valley and I can
speak for most of my friends as well. In my opinion silicon valley has lost
it's allure and really has no appeal over any other tech hub, and honestly has
more negatives due to high cost of living and terrible commute times from what
I've heard

The only advantage silicon valley has anymore is ready access to money but
even that is going away with more VCs paying attention to other areas of the
country

Silicon Valley has essentially slit its own throat by pricing out young
entrepreneurs and adopting a wall st lite culture imo

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ben_jones
You'd be surprised. There's a fair bit of nuance to Silicon Valley that gives
it an advantage over other hubs. Close to Asia / Asian VC. Engineers from
Berkley, Stanford, and the UC system. Local government and finance that is
willing to work with tech. Etc.

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nostrademons
The big one is a local populace - even the non-technical folks - who is very
willing to try out crazy ideas and give them a go, at least once. That's why
Silicon Valley has a reputation for crazy nutjobs, but it's also why so many
crazy but eventually world-changing ideas start here. Most people here are at
least willing to meet for coffee and try out your half-baked app idea, even if
they forget about it an hour later. In many other places in the country, you
won't even get that far.

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coredog64
PetSmart was founded in (and still runs from) Phoenix. What does anything in
this story have to do with SV?

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jt2190
I've created a thread to discuss the original, much more interesting paper:
"How... Startup Economy [Culture] is Spreading Across the [U.S.] — and How It
Can Be Accelerated"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14227248](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14227248)

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aaron-lebo
Why not talk about it here? What about the paper stuck out to you?

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jt2190
I didn't want to hijack this comment thread.

The paper title essentially sums up what is interesting: The idea that the
culture of startups (build fast, test assumptions, iterate, etc.) is starting
to make it's way outside of tech centers, with great benefit.

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walshemj
Some of the very early web projects 94/95 at british telecom where like this
:-)

