People actually move to new cities in order to found startups?<p>And when they do, they move to <i>Silicon Valley</i> or the <i>Bay Area</i>, where talent is more expensive than anywhere else on the planet?<p>WTF?<p>I live in Boston and dig it, but this sort of article screams "trying too hard." Anyone who even considers the possibility that Boston might not have enough talent for their startup is a crackhead. Basically any place with a university and access to the internet is a good enough place for the right founder to build something of quality.
I will add that Backupify started in Louisville, KY, and we were funded by First Round while we were still there. We didn't have to move to raise money, but we couldn't find the tech/startup talent we needed. So we looked at NYC, Boston, and the Valley. I talked to lots of people who lived in each place and ultimately, as you would expect, everyone raved about whichever place it was that they lived. Ultimately, I chose Boston because MIT is the most innovative place in the world, and because it is a highly intellectual city and I have a lot of interests outside of just tech startups. I've been very very happy here, and think it's a great place to build a company.
I run a startup and a consulting business in Miami.<p>My girlfriend has been offered to move to Boston, and I'm not going to hide that I'm afraid at the idea of leaving a place where I built tons of connection in the past 6 years (I moved to Florida from Italy, so I started with 0 connections). I'm afraid that I will have to start from scratch again in Boston, where I don't know a single person.<p>What are you thoughts about moving a company to Boston? Are people open to accept a new person in the community or is it very closed and elitist (I'm definitely not MIT or Harvard material).<p>EDIT:
By the way, I will be in Boston (she's going to check the place) from March 10th to the 13th, I would love to meet you or participate to any event. So if you are there please email me at davide at 39inc.com :)
I've been working on a directory of Boston-area tech startups:<p><a href="http://startupsinboston.com/" rel="nofollow">http://startupsinboston.com/</a><p>Currently about 242 listed -- I know there are more, but discovery is challenging; many web startups don't make any mention of where they're physically located on their site.
Boston is a place where a lot of things start. Do music here, then on to LA. Standup comedy here, then to the real land of New York City. Tech startups are born here then go to the Bay area.
A few reasons why Buzzient is in Boston and staying put:<p><a href="http://www.buzzient.com/blog/why-buzzient-moved-to-the-innovation-district" rel="nofollow">http://www.buzzient.com/blog/why-buzzient-moved-to-the-innov...</a><p>One of the main ones just being Geography: We are close to tons of great schools for hiring talent and there is customer access as well, with so many other Fortune 1000 companies around, in Finance especially. If only the investors took as much risk as those in CA and in NYC!
Related question: if you're not aiming to raise money or grow big fast, how important is it to be in a tech hub?<p>I live in Waltham, right outside of Boston, and am considering moving somewhere cheaper and warmer because the benefits of building a company here (or SV) don't seem as important if you're going the MicroISV/Micropreneur route. Thoughts?
Is there a particular type of startup that would be appropriate for Boston versus other locations? My instinct is that outside of Biotech and Enterprise software, it is still a huge disadvantage to start a startup in Boston, but I would love to be proven wrong (ideally by some sensible statistics).<p>Is Boston the kind of place where you can locally raise a seed round with ten or twenty angels for your consumer web startup with great traction but no revenue? Is Boston the kind of place where you can find engineers whose former job was to scale a database or web server or cache to hundreds of millions of active users? Are there deep pocketed companies locally who can afford to and regularly do acquisitions? Are MIT/Harvard (or BC, BU, NE, Tufts, WPI, Olin) grads going to Boston startups, or are they going to banking, Dropbox, or Facebook? Are there enough senior people around?<p>Vertica, ITA, and Basho are all great companies for example, but are they succeeding because they are in Boston, or in spite of it? How often are these companies flying out to the SF Bay Area to handle core parts of their business (customers, investment, business development)?
I really like the Boston tech scene, and the atmosphere and social environment created around it. I work with a lot of folks from/around the area on a daily basis, so even though I'm not in Boston, I have a lot of friends and connections there and make at least one pilgrimage there a year to spend a few days doing business in person. If it weren't for separating the child from the grandparents, I would move into the area (though maybe not <i>in</i> Boston itself, due to the high cost of living). Maybe when the kid is older.
Does anyone care about living in a city that's just plain nice to live in? Everyone's so concerned about whether a city is conducive to start-ups they miss out on evaluating quality of life from a personal perspective.<p>I choose to live in San Diego because I love to live in San Diego, for innumerable personal reasons, not because it's "startupy". Stocktwits moved to Coronado island near San Diego not because there's a thriving start-up scene here, but because it's just a damn nice place to live and work. Developers who can live anywhere should want to live in great places for personal reasons.<p>For whatever it's worth, I've done a significant amount of traveling around the United States (mostly on three JetBlue flying passes) and in general find cities like Boston to be overrated in terms of quality of life, especially when factoring in the enormous cost of living.<p>No doubt these are all personal value judgments. I just wonder why people optimize so little on the simple personal quality of life vector and so much on whether there's a bunch of "startupy people" there.
Why you might not want to move to MA/Boston if you're an employee: <a href="http://www.boston.com/business/technology/innoeco/2011/09/noncomps.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.boston.com/business/technology/innoeco/2011/09/no...</a><p>Their non-compete laws are some of the most repressive in the nation.