I have read in many places that if you are considering a startup, Silicon Valley, Boston and Seattle are your choices for places to work and live. The odds of success in these places are significantly higher than anywhere else in North America.<p>I am asking this because I am currently living in Western Canada in a fairly low tech area and my future plans include web startups.<p>My co-founder and I are trying to weigh the pros and cons of relocating. Because we are not planning to look for large rounds of funding or to begin a hiring binge in the near future, are there other large benefits to basing our web company out of these "startup friendly" centers?<p>Does Canada have any areas that stand out as being startup friendly?
I've asked this before, but it bears repeating:<p>Have there been many wildly successful tech startups that were based on the premise "save money", to the point that they located themselves some place incredibly cheap (but far outside of tech industry circles)?<p>I'm not saying it isn't a valid business plan, as I don't know, but I can point to an awful lot of Silicon Valley startups that have been wildly successful, and no wildly successful tech startups from Idaho. It's really cheap to live in Idaho, so you've got a REALLY long runway. Why aren't there success stories? (Expand it to the whole midwest, and the story isn't remarkably better.)<p>Then again, Kevin Hale from Wufoo told me a great story about a technique he uses in one of his presentations (which are awesome)...he passes around printouts about the top 20 or so fastest growing companies according to Inc. Magazine, and asks questions about them, asking folks to raise their hand if the answer is "yes". One of the questions is "Is the company you're looking at based in California or Boston or New York?" and only one or two hands go up (Wufoo is based in Florida, and thus they take great satisfaction in talking about successful companies outside of the tech startup hubs). But, Inc. Magazine covers stuff that isn't tech.
In Canada right now I'd have to say the hottest area is Montreal, with Vancouver and Toronto on a second tier. There's more momentum and innovation going on in Montreal, and some interesting early-stage funds have opened up there.<p>Toronto has an internet community, but not really a startup community. And Vancouver has a bunch of highlights (Flickr comes to mind), but is really stagnating right now IMO (I live there currently). In Canada, the money and attention disproportionately follows the local tech celebrities, and it's hard to get either if you're starting out on your own. And if it's hard to get investment, it's hard to get your ideas off the ground.<p>The question of whether to relocate is one that I've thought about quite a bit recently. I think to get a foot in the door, you have to meet the right people first. And it's really hard to meet those people when you're not in a tech-hub. Once you're a success, you can extrapolate that success in your hometown or where-ever with more certainty.<p>Canadian VCs fawn over local people who have a well-known name in the Valley. I know that for a fact - more than a few startups in town are created by people who are purely riding notoriety from Web 1.0. If you don't have the notoriety, they'll always be suspicious of you.
Move to Austin! I consider this THE place to be. It is a tech city, we have Silicon Hills, its MUCH MORE CHEAPER than SF and you have all the commodities of the tech cities like SF, Seattle and Boston. Plus, we have UT Austin, a top 10 school in CS, in case you are looking to recruit.
37signals are in Chicago (and until around 1½ year ago one of them was in Denmark), and Skype was done in Estonia. There are many other stories of successful companies that aren't in the major hubs. So I would say that it is definitely possible. Especially now where almost all business can be taken care of over the web. A designer I know even moved to Thailand, and did his work from the beach without skipping a beat - without his customers knowing about it.
1. Resources
2. Talent
3. Money
4. Travel Costs / Accessibility<p>These ideas all come to mind on why you would want to be in a major hub. That said I believe a start up can start anywhere but needs to be prepared to relocate should the needs of the business demand that they do so.
We're based in Geneva, Switzerland and Sweden. We even have our own developers (not outsourced) in Bangladesh. Its easy to be distributed, and we've had no problems being in Europe. Geneva is not huge, but I try and get out and meet local entrepreneurs, participate in Open Coffees, talk to some local VCs etc. You can be anywhere if you have a great product and people want it.
I started my company in Seattle and just recently moved to SF -- even though Seattle is extremely tech-friendly, it's still like moving from the countryside into the Big City. Ideas abound, it's like the whole city is involved in a big brainstorming session. Even if you don't need more talent or money (lucky you!), your product benefits.