Just Do It: Move to Silicon Valley

Moving to Silicon Valley definitely gets you closer to a pool of tech startup minded people and the venture capitalists that feed them in the same way that moving to Los Angeles helps you start your acting career. But I'm sure that there are quite a few wannabes up north who never moved beyond the dreaming phase, just like there are quite a few waiters here in Los Angeles waiting for their big break.<p>A tech startup anywhere needs smart founders and lots of determination. You need more than just a zip code to make it in the startup world. I think the location only helps if the other pieces are already in place before you make the move.

I struggle with this question myself a lot. I'm in LA currently and instead of conversations about web startups in cafes - I hear managers talking to talent and hot new ideas for movie scripts.. Pretty cool but doesn't help with a web startup.<p>The one major complaint I continue to hear about SV from my male friends is the severe lack of eligible females there. Being from the east coast and now living in LA I might find it hard to live in place where I'm surrounded by predominantly male engineers 24/7 who are only talking about tech. I used to work as an engineer at Cisco and I remember that feeling. It wasn't a good one.

"You can do a startup from anywhere.<p>And it's true. Except that it's mainly bullshit."<p>Doing perfectly well in New York City. Thank you very much.<p>Can we stop this silly banter?

In my opinion, another approach (even a recommended approach) is to incubate elsewhere and move to the valley when you have some traction. There's just too much noise there, too much "flavor of the month." Examples that fit this approach that come to mind are flickr, digg, and stumbleupon. I'm sure there's plenty more.

This article, and many like it, seem to use "startup" and "consumer-facing web startup" interchangeably. If you're doing the latter, you will at least be in better company in the Bay Area. There are certainly companies that benefit from having a presence there, but there's something to be said about being outside a consumer-web echo chamber as well.<p>In Founders at Work, the one founder who I remember stressing the importance of location the most was Mike Lazaridis, who started his company in a smallish town an hour or two from Toronto. They have a higher market cap than all but a few of the companies Jessica interviewed.

How did you overcome the visa barrier? "Just do it" is sound enough advice if you're American but you seem to be Canadian (and I'm Australian), you might as well be saying Just do it: Flap your arms and fly.

What about labour costs? I am currently working for a startup that has its development office in eastern germany, with a management office near Frankfurt. Although nobody explicitly said that, but the reason is simply that wages are much lower over here.<p>On the other hand, afaik in Sillicon Valley salaries are very high. I'm just wondering why nobody has brought that up so far.

&#62; But after some follow-up questions, I'd soon find out they don't even read TechCrunch ...<p>And here I thought not reading TechCrunch was a positive attribute.

I don't think anyone would disagree that it's more difficult to find startup-oriented folks in Toronto, but you'll get better results if you look in the right places.<p><a href="http://democamp.com" rel="nofollow">http://democamp.com</a>, <a href="http://unspace.ca/innovation/pubnite" rel="nofollow">http://unspace.ca/innovation/pubnite</a>, to name a few.

It's not the main point of his post, but would you really want both founders to be heavily influenced by and involved in the Hacker News echo chamber? I suspect some diversity of thinking might be more valuable.

This is an interesting article for me because I'm currently in SV and am contemplating moving away. My employees are all remote contractors, but it's time we got an office and moved together and there's just no way I could have them move here without at least doubling their salary because of the insane cost of living here. I can get office space elsewhere for half the cost and continue to pay my people what I do now if we get an office elsewhere, so that's what we're looking at.<p>Isn't an important factor in success of a start up to be able to run lean?

<i>By three months, I was working with a co-founder who had also moved here to do a startup and not only reads Hacker News, but has so many karma points I would know what to do with all of them.</i><p>It is funny how important he makes the karma factor sound - like that automatically makes him a great co-founder.

There are two reasons to move to Silicon Valley. Serendipity and great tech people.<p>If you already have the right business idea and great people there is no reason what so ever to move.

In the words of a Russian dude:<p><i>Silicon Valley's greatest asset is communication. People discuss their work not trifles. Russia would benefit from this kind of environment.</i><p><a href="http://twitter.com/KremlinRussia_E/status/16881191397" rel="nofollow">http://twitter.com/KremlinRussia_E/status/16881191397</a>

Yes, if you want to do a web 2.0 startup, then the valley is the place to be. No doubt!<p>Although I then think of Flickr, Plenty of Fish, Club Penguin, etc. and realize that this is not necessarily true.<p>How many VC-backed companies actually do well enough for the founders to get rich? Not that many - you're better off bootstrapping and then flipping the co. for a $ amount that is in the few million. And I think the Valley is the worst place to bootstrap due to the high cost of living.<p>And don't get me started on the high cost of getting health insurance. You're better off in Toronto.

<i>So stop rationalizing, stop making excuses and just do it: move to Silicon Valley.</i><p>I might, if the US would stop making "immigrants are destroying our country" excuses for not having a sane immigration policy.

Only in Silicon Valley where you go in a cafe and there's a good chance you'll see other people working on their own startup, preparing to pitch to an investor or actually pitching to an investor.<p>Also, a lot of people has an active Twitter account that establishes their identity online.<p>People here just dream big. Some are delusional while some are actually on their way to making it big.

Related reads- "Israel Nation" on how Israel built something similar to the valley <a href="http://www.startupnationbook.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.startupnationbook.com/</a><p>PGs essay- <a href="http://www.paulgraham.com/america.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.paulgraham.com/america.html</a>

You think Toronto is difficult for finding engaged people to work with?, try Cork, Ireland!! ...<p>I have to get out there soon, even on a holiday visa ...

Depends what sort of startup you want to do. Personally I would need a multimillion dollar incentive to move there.

Here is even better advice to give (assuming you're not somewhere really extreme like the North Pole, or a place without Internet access, etc.):<p>Just Do It: Where You Are<p>because it's faster, cheaper and more efficient. Because being in Silicon Valley is not the critical ingredient, by a long shot.

It's a lot easier to do something if you have social support and cultural validation.