

Scobleizer: The new worldwide startup - od
http://scobleizer.com/2010/02/26/the-new-worldwide-startup/

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patio11
_PR is being decentralized. Thanks to blogs, Skype, YouTube, Twitter and
Facebook you can get onto TechCrunch no matter where in the world you are._

If your idea of decentralized PR (or effective PR) is "you can get on
Techcrunch from anywhere in the world" you may have been living in the Valley
too long.

 _Silicon Valley used to have a lock on geeks._

That's so wrong I don't even think it is worth refuting.

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amirnathoo
I think this mistakes cause and effect. The hypothesis of the article is that
new trends, like the cloud, being exploited globally make the Valley less
important. But I think that other places are adopting Valley trends, like
exploiting the cloud, because the Valley is becoming more important. And the
reason the situation is improving for entrepreneurs in those other places is
because they are copying Valley trends.

I know Cambridge, UK best since that's where I'm from. And increasingly, new
companies are forming there with little funding and young, highly technical
founders. More people there are reading TechCrunch, have heard of Y
Combinator, and are more able to re-locate to the Valley thanks mainly to the
spread of knowledge. In the future, the startup visa might come into play too.

The Valley's culture is going global, and other locations will benefit as a
result, but the main beneficiary is the Valley itself.

~~~
webwright
I dunno-- the Seattle startup scene has seen pretty insane growth over the
last 5 years... It was purportedly nearly non-existant 5-7 years ago. Harj and
I threw together a YC Seattle meetup that was over 100 people in about a week.

You could attend a startup related event in Seattle almost every day of the
week.

I did some really weak science and found:

"In 2007, 45 of 110 (41%) acquired companies were in the Valley. In 2008, only
18 of 115 (16%) were."

(whole post with sources: <http://bit.ly/bDpam>)

I also (with some help) crunched all Crunchbase data here:
<http://bit.ly/Mapl1>

The globalization make sense to me. 5 years ago, you couldn't even roll the
dice without a million bucks. Now plenty of startups spin up with pennies. And
while the Valley has a few advantages, the really CLEAR advantage that it has
(which has diminishing value for the earliest stages) has always been the huge
number of investors.

Still, though-- starting up might be getting easier, but when you need funding
relocation might still be right thing to do.

~~~
ojbyrne
I think Seattle was crawling with startups in the mid-nineties (the windows
3.1 era). Things go in cycles.

~~~
_delirium
There've been a decent number in the years in between too. Farecast (founded
2003, acquired 2008) and Twango (founded 2004, acquired 2007) come to mind as
successful examples.

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hristov
I was with the author before the lame foursquare plug. I am not going to go to
a coffee shop anywhere and ask anybody what foursquare is, because that does
not prove anything and I am not going to foursquare's advertising for free.
But I am going to make mental note that any blogger that mentions foursquare
gratuitously without relevance is a shill and should not be trusted.

~~~
Murkin
I think you missed the point. What the author was trying to show was how
different regions adapt new technology.

In my "world" almost no one uses Twitter, 4square or any other new
technology/tools. This means starting a new trend and getting early adapters
(from within my social circle) is extremely hard.

Twitter could never get started here. FourSquare would of never got enough
usage to prove the concept.

IMHO, this is a very important point for social (and many other types) of
startups.

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Maro
The first paragraph says it all: worldwide to Scoble means US, UK, Canada,
France and Israel. What does Scoble know about how hard it is to start up in
Hungary or Russia or ...? Nothing.

~~~
ojbyrne
I don't think you're quite doing justice to his lack of perception. There's
plenty more demonstration of superficial understanding of the world and the
industry, including

\- the obnoxious plug for "his company." It's a little hard to miss amongst
the idiocy suggesting that until recently, the only place you could find data
centers was in Silicon Valley. Never mind that "his company", Rackspace, is
located in Texas and has nine data centers, none of which happen to be in
California.

\- this bit about foursquare:

"Go to a local coffee shop in your neighborhood, for instance, and ask people
what Foursquare is. I guarantee you that in most Silicon Valley coffee shops
you’ll find someone. Not so in most other places in the world."

I can think of many neighborhoods where this is demonstrably false, starting
with the neighborhood in NYC where Foursquare is located.

\- the paragraph talking about how low corporate tax rates are in Vancouver
(noticeably discounting the rest of Canada), a city probably best known for
insane cost of living, immediately followed by a paragraph talking about how
the rest of the world has much lower cost of living than the bay area.

Not only doesn't he have a good understanding of the industry he works in, but
he seems to lack a basic understanding of geography, politics and economics.

My personal theory is that one of the key reasons for the "globalization" of
the startup culture is the preponderance of cluelessness in the pundit
community in northern California.

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axod
There's far better places to startup than the valley, there always have been
though. That's nothing new.

Probably if you're into the whole 'build to get acquired' thing, then it's an
advantage, but if you're in it to build a profitable company then I'd say the
valley puts you at a disadvantage. High cost of living, no public health care,
not to mention all the software patent DMCA sue everyone legal risks.

