But then again, even here in SF, angels and VCs won't take a meeting w/ you unless you get an intro. In that sense, it is who you know. (Though I've found people more than willing to help each other here in Bay Area).
Is there a different sense of "who you know" that you're talking about in Boston? The only thing I can imagine is something like when people use to talk about your breeding.
The VC culture is probably closer to banker culture, so you're right about that. I've never gotten to meet with a VC without an intro. But I was talking more about the culture at large. You've kind of got it with your last sentence.
The larger culture in Boston is a lot more "who you know" / "where did you go to school" than in California. Basically if you didn't go to an Ivy League school then you're kind of in a lower social caste. You get looked down on (in a very subtile and "polite" way) if you are not Ivy League or if you are from the "flyover country."
The other (related) problem with Boston is that it's not extroverted. Boston is bookish and introverted and quiet. It's sort of impolite in Boston to have a fun personality, and it's very hard to make friends. Bostonians don't have friends, they have colleagues. (A bit of an exaggeration, but you get the idea.) Laughing, making jokes, and having any kind of personality sort of marks you as lower class.
It reminds me of a more classist version of the famed "Seattle chill":
Basically Boston is very classist, bookish, and introverted. Boston has tons and tons of brains, but they're <sniff sniff> intellectuals, not revolutionaries or innovators.
Boston may actually have more raw IQ-power than the valley though. Put LSD in the drinking water here and you might rival the valley in a few years.
But like I said there's a bright side too. The Bostonian politeness thing is a double edged sword. On one hand it's stuffy, but on the other hand it can be quite noble. Bostonians will help you out. They will quietly come to your aid. They will close ranks to defend you if you're wronged (provided you're "in" with them), and they will quietly and gradually mentor you. You can drop your wallet in downtown Boston (population almost 1 million) and someone will drive to your house to bring you your wallet with everything still in it. (This has happened to me, and to two people I know.)
So the upside is that Boston is very civilized in a positive way, but the downside is that it's very "civilized" in a negative way. Oh, and you don't have to own a car. Having to sit in a dinosaur burner huffing fumes for three hours every day is one of my least favorite things about California.
Ironically in Boston, you only need a car if you work in the tech industry as most of the startup's are located on 128 which is in the outskirts of the Boston suburban sprawl. But if you work in finance or allied health, everything is conveniently located downtown.
Also, I don't agree that Boston is a civilized city. IMO, Boston is a lot like Providence or Bridgeport, plus a few more ivory tower enclaves and lots more inebriated college kids.
In my wildest dreams I've never thought I'd hear Boston compared to Bridgeport (I assume you mean CT?). Never been to Boston, but B'port must have changed an awful lot since I lived there :-)
Nah. Bridgeport hasn't change one bit since you left (I assume the Bridgeport you know is one whose mayor is caught with a cocaine habit and restaurants in downtown are robbed in daylight). It's just your over-estimating perception of Boston; imagine a bigger New Haven with a couple of more Yale campuses and equal number of run-down neighborhoods next to them.
Could you name some of the run-down neighborhoods next to campuses? I don't see it, unless there are some Yale campuses in Fields Corner that I don't know about.
All of Boston's Universities are located downtown or in Cambridge; no slums at Kenmore/Brookline/Downtown, but go out to the outskirts of the city, like Mission Hills, Roxbury or Dorchester (away from Huntington Ave. Medical Campus). Or the part of Brighton and lower Allston that's further away from Harvard and BU. Or the true Slumerville of Somerville away from Tufts. Even East Cambridge away from MIT and Kendall Sq., although that part of town is fast gentrifying a la Davis Sq.
The misconception is that Boston is this global city of about 4.5 million people living in academic utopia when it's a really smaller city of 600,000 people, where even a smaller percentage are actually living in ivory towers. The rest of the 4.5 million people live in typical post-industrial New England towns surrounding Boston such as Lynn, Revere and Quincy.
There are a lot of startups in Cambridge and downtown and a few in Newton and other train-serviced places. But you're right about 128... but that's part of why 128 is a terrible place to locate a startup. I would pick Quincy over 128. Lots of good office space at affordable prices, good restaurants, and train serviced... but not very hip. :) I would even look at "Reveah" before 128. If it's off the train it's off the map.
> It reminds me of a more classist version of the famed "Seattle chill":
Yikes, when I was reading your description of Boston my mind was going "this man is describing Seattle".
Don't let the locals fool you - the only people I have ever met who've denied the existence of the Seattle Freeze are the Seattle natives.
If you want a fun, energetic atmosphere full of interesting people, stay the hell out of this city. I personally am planning my daring escape... but I also hate cars.
Even though there's a lot of NYC bashing on this thread, you might like New York. You might try Chicago, Toronto (if you wanna go Canuck), or DC too. You can live car-free in all those places and they're less introverted.
If you moved to Boston you could have the chill but lose the car. :)
Funny... Boston is exactly the same in that the natives don't get the chill thing and deny its existence. It's normal to them. But then again, native midwesterners don't get the cultural isolation of the midwest either. People come to the MW and are like "holy crap you guys are a cultural backwater!" "No we aren't! We have 3G and FIOS!"
On the plus side, it's easy to get an intro to those investors because ingeneral other entrepreneurs and hackers will gladly open their rolodex for you if you are building something they think is interesting.
Is there a different sense of "who you know" that you're talking about in Boston? The only thing I can imagine is something like when people use to talk about your breeding.