Why Chance Encounters Work

As I mentioned in the posts comments, one thing the valley has that many cities don't is a completely different perspective on failure. In the valley, if you don't have a successful exit on your startup, no one jumps on you in a bad way. Everyone understands the challenge and knows you learned from it. First thing people say are, "So, what's next?".<p>This allows people to try things more and take risk. Something that our Michigan and Detroit culture don't have built into our makeup. It's definitely changing and sites like GrowDetroit and their community are making big strides in changing this mentality.

I marvel at Silicon Valley everytime I visit. Here we're a tiny minority and in SV its like visiting the company town. I imagine that's what it must be for a Hungarian car manufacturer to visit Detroit.<p>I think we have to work hard in Michigan to encourage chance encounters. How do we do that? Pick a single place at a set time to meet every week. Make it within walking distance of a university. Do it for each Michigan city with startup activity.<p>Do you have a Michigan startup? In Lansing all the user groups are having a DemoCamp at the Michigan Historical Museum on Dec 15. Sign up to speak here:<p><a href="https://adobeformscentral.com/?f=OQitLN6urkwqMVB8csMG4A" rel="nofollow">https://adobeformscentral.com/?f=OQitLN6urkwqMVB8csMG4A</a>

It's not only rough doing a startup in Detroit, it's hard to find good people in Detroit, specifically designers and developers that have done "web" stuff before or are even interested in it. You have a lot of people who have worked for the big 3 or GE, but not too many who have picked up "newer" technologies and methodologies that a startup would use.