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More on the bay area and european startups
If you’ve seen my early post about the SF bay area as a center of innovation world (particularly on the web 2.0), you know where this is going, but there’s a good post by Tom Coates at Plastic Bag that says exactly what I’ve said months ago (even if he’s limited to the UK). But seriously: where the hell is europe in the startup world?
Because I’m not even talking about Portugal (my country, as you may know) where apparently everybody seems to pay more attention to investing in stuff like the EuroMillions (only to lose all of the money put up) instead of thinking about proper ways to create new things. I’m talking about Europe here. I know there’s a whole lot of people who are smart enough to start enticing projects and startups. They just don’t really do it. Why, I’m not sure - fact is, it’s just not happening.
In my previous post, Evan Henshaw-Plath (from Odeo) commented that the emergence of interesting projects from the bay area sucks up all creative thinkers to one tiny little area (the SF bay). At the time, I was sceptical about the whole idea. Now, and it hasn’t been that long, I know he was right. Since I got into the job market again, I’ve had quite a few offers (a few a day, still), and let me tell you 70% of those are from the US. Is there a tendency here?
Now, many of you probably know that during the time I considered creating a startup for web 2.0 R&D, I pondered a lot of aspects particularly about how much globalization has an impact on project success and usage trends. Mainly because it seems like people are more easily made aware of products coming from the US, because that’s where internet big media companies are located. I personally believe (and the long tail model backs up my belief) that there’s really an audience for smaller select products that target smaller audiences (you know - success, in tiny little circles). Why then, aren’t we taking the chance?
I’ve worked for / with software companies in various roles in Italy, India, Uruguay, and Ecuador in addition to Boston and San Francisco. I think a large part of the number of companies which are sucessful is based on the structures which make it easy. The two places i found it was easy to start and run a software company were India and a few places in the US. Outside of the SF bay area, seattle, boston, and a few other places in the US it’s also dificult.
There are easy ways to setup the office, to get programmers, to outsource the HR and business aspects to another company, get angel investors, deal with VC’s, make deals, and eventually either sell the startup or go public.
Is that all a good thing? I guess so. The quality of life is better other places.
But in the US we can get equiptment, we get servers fast. Odeo’s about to get a whole load of big file servers, and we can get them from a company a few blocks over who we know somebody who knows somebody there. Amazon ships fast, there are no import duties which consider computers as a luxury, the computer stores have everything we could need.
Want to do a mobile deal? We can just arrange a lunch meeting with half a dozen people who either work in the city, by which we mean a 1 square mile area, SOMA, or down in silicon valley about 45 minutes away.
Odeo picked up somebody from Audio Feast, that ment that we had build in access to somebody who knew the space. He moved from aol to audio feast to odeo, all within the same space, with the same contacts, same industry. This means the startups inherit a history which provides depth and resources to their work.
Personally i’d prefer to take August off, but at odeo we wont’ be doing that, we’ll have a few days off here and there, but it’s a different, and perhaps unhealthy work ethic.
When comparing the US with europe, or other parts of the world, remember you aren’t really talking about the US. You are talking about San Francisco, Seattle, Boston…. Three of the most expensive and politically liberal / progressive parts of the US.
Evhead tried to start a couple companies in Nebraska where he is from and failed. Only when he moved to san francisco was he able to generate traction. Flickr was started in Vancouver by people who had lived and worked for years in San Francisco, they were then bought by yahoo and moved back down here.
Why san francisco? There’s a huge arts community, it’s a multicutural city, it’s a city where the city council and the political community is left leaning. It’s a city which respects freaks. There is currently a city endorced movement to rename of the bridges from the “bay bridge” to the “emperor nortan bridge” after a crazy excentric who lived on the streets in the 1870’s. It’s the city which was the center of the american counter culture, hippies, and anti-vietnam war movement. Dating back in to the 50’s san francisco was a home to beat poets and cultural outlaws. Every august a significant portion of the city’s tech workers / hipsters goes out in to the desert for Burningman where people consume lots drugs as part of an enourous week long participatory artistic happening.
The cutural rebellion which is instutionalized in san francisco is part of what makes it cool and accepted to venture out in to crazy startups. One crazy person might create exploding fire eating artistic robots, another might try and create a new kind of web publishing app.
I think that has a lot to do with why it happens in san francisco.
Comment by rabble — July 31, 2005 @ 5:56 am