Tag: ian hathaway
As I wander around Seattle for a few days, including a fun event with JP Morgan in the morning and PSL at the end of the day, I’ve been pondering the evolution of startup communities. I first started coming to Seattle in 1990 and wrote a post seven years ago about it – Hanging Out In Pioneer Square. Last night, while sitting with Greg and Shannon Gottesman, overlooking Lake Washington, I relaxed into a wonderful feeling of topophilia.
I’ve always loved Seattle. At life dinners, Amy and I periodically play a somewhat morbid, but interesting game of “Where would you move to if I died?” as we both think it would be too difficult to stay in one of the places we’ve shared so much time. Seattle is regularly at the top of my list.
Seattle has grown and evolved in the 35 years since I’ve been coming here. It’s incredible to see (and have experienced) the evolution of the startup community here. I received a few questions about it at the public events yesterday, and was reflecting on a common theme that has been discussed on a few podcasts, which, if you’re interested in this topic, are worth listening to.
As a bonus, Ian Hathaway is now hosting a must-listen podcast called Outsider Inc. Ian recently featured me on an episode, and his most recent one is with Dug Song.
I spent some time with Dug and his extended Detroit community members when I was in Indianapolis a few weeks ago with High Alpha and Scott Dorsey’s team. Here’s the bonus bonus video about their Detroit to Indy Roadtrip GEC2025!
The second principle of the Boulder Thesis is that one must take a long-term view, at least 20 years, to build a startup community. I evolved that to “a 20-year view from today” – basically, always look forward 20 years. In the podcast with Lesa Mitchell, I realized that I’ve been working on building startup communities and conceptualizing and understanding the ideas behind them for around 35 years, which I found rhymes nicely with the 35 years I’ve been coming to Seattle.
On day three of a beautiful stretch of weather in Seattle, I’m delighted to be here.
Amy and I are in Knoxville, Tennessee all week. We are with Ian Hathaway (my co-author of an upcoming book titled The Startup Community Way) finishing up the draft of the book.
My plan was to end the week with the Knoxville Marathon on Sunday (marathon #26) but I had a crummy long run on Saturday in Boulder and woke up this morning with a cold. While it could merely be pre-race hypochondria, I feel lethargic enough to consider downgrading to the half marathon. Plus, my resting HR is 60, vs. my normal low 50s, so it’s another indicator that I’m worn out and need to take care of myself. So, we will see.
Recently, Ian and Richard Florida did a large study that culminated in an extensive report on the Rise of the Global Startup City. In addition to the report, there’s a website with a digital story and a lot of data to play around with.
Ian and Richard wrote an OpEd in The Wall Street Journal titled Can the U.S. Keep Its High-Tech Edge? and Ian wrote a threaded summary with reflections on his Twitter feed.
If this is a topic you are interested in, it’s worth spending some time reading all the links.
I’ve been in San Diego with Amy for a while but we are returning to Boulder in a week. San Diego has been great, but I miss my dogs, my friends, and the Colorado vibe.
When people ask me about the Colorado vibe, I often talk about GiveFirst. Soon there will be a book (by me) on this, but for now there’s an increasing amount of content on the web building up to explain it. This article in the Colorado Sun – How Techstars’ “GiveFirst” mantra became a road map for the startup community in Colorado and beyond – was excellent and had numerous short examples of how GiveFirst works and influences a startup community.
Next up is a fun article by my co-author of Startup Communities Way (my new Startup Communities book – coming up mid-year 2019) Ian Hathaway. A few days ago he cranked out a post titled Colorado is for Founders. I love that phrase and he led off the post with this great tweet from Phil Weiser.
Excited to work with our new Governor and my client to be, @jaredpolis. pic.twitter.com/5jOv1K0gDL
— Phil Weiser (@pweiser) December 5, 2018
He goes on to explain Jared and Phil’s huge accomplishments and impacts around startups and the startup community. The punch line in the post is:
“By many measures, Colorado is the most entrepreneurial state in the country, a fact that I discovered in 2013 when studying high-technology business formation around the United States. I was struck by just how many places across the state had a high proportion of startup activity occurring—a finding that has been extended to looking across other types of high-growth entrepreneurship as well. Something special is happening there, and it has been for many years.”
I’ll end with the Holiday Gift Guide from Techstars. If you want to give someone you know the gift of something from a Techstars company this holiday season, here are the choices all in one place.
Happy Friday Colorado. See you in a week.
The hyperbolic headlines are once again accompanying the articles about Silicon Valley. A Sunday NY Times article titled Silicon Valley Is Over, Says Silicon Valley kicks off what I expect is another wave of this. It references a recent Wired article titled Everyone Hates Silicon Valley, Except Its Imitators,
Go read them all and then tune back in here. I’ll wait.
Buried deep within the NYT article is an admission. “Complaints about Silicon Valley insularity are as old as the Valley itself” followed by an anecdote about Jim Clark moving to Florida during the dotcom era. Blink twice if you don’t know who Jim Clark is; blink once if you downloaded Netscape from an FTP site somewhere when it was still called Mosiac. And, blink three times if you realize that Netscape is now owned by Oath, which is a subsidiary of Verizon, which is headquartered in New York, and is the merger of Bell Atlantic (Philadelphia), NYNEX (New York), and GTE (which, awesomely, bought BBN, created GTE Internetworking, spun it off as Genuity after the Bell Atlantic merger, which was then acquired out of bankruptcy by Level 3 (Broomfield, Colorado – adjacent to Boulder) which is now owned by CenturyLink (Louisiana)). Blink four times if you are still here and followed all of that. Kind of entertaining that Netscape led us to Monroe, Louisiana.
Now, go read Ian Hathaway’s post titled Silicon Valley is Not Over. He nails it.
Dan Primack waded in with a tweet.
The “Silicon Valley VCs moving to the Midwest” story is a bit like your friend saying after a vacation to a tropical island: “I might just quit my job and live there forever.”
It’s not happening.
— Dan Primack (@danprimack) March 5, 2018
It’s worth clicking through and reading the comment thread. It’s delightful.
Silicon Valley is not over. Over 100 years since its notional inception, it’s a fascinating and amazing ecosystem. But it’s also not the only place you can create technology companies. I’m sitting in a hotel in New York and, according to a recent article from Bloomberg, New York Will Never Be Silicon Valley. And It’s Good With That.
The real story is that you can create startups, and thriving startup communities anywhere. Imagine the NYT article was titled “In a Moment of Introspection, Silicon Valley VCs Realize That There Are Tech Startups Outside of Silicon Valley.” Nah – that wouldn’t get as many clicks.