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Comment by rexreed | Hacker News Reader

This is non-sensical: "The biggest winners, by contrast, are much smaller, less coastal, and low-cost cities just starting to incubate their own ecosystem"

Since when was Boston, which experienced a 45% increase in VC investment and which still ranks #2 in total Venture investment a NON-Coastal, low-cost city? And the top growth location is San Diego (coastal, high cost). I think the key is to look at which sectors are experiencing growth and shrinkage in VC investment and see how that correlates to the locations in which those investments are happening.

BTW, Austin - it's not doing well.

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Non-sensical is hyperbolic. You're pulling those two examples from a table that includes these rows:

Dallas $127,715,000 / 147% / $75,940,000

Detroit $66,985,000 / 145% / $39,640,000

Portland $42,600,000 / 675% / $37,100,000

St. Louis $23,930,000 / 327% / $18,330,000

Kansas City $13,670,000 / 297% / $10,230,000

Yes, but the two examples are at the top of the table and together significantly exceed the sum of the rest of the table.

exactly. And while the fly-over country (as they say) might indeed be non-coastal and lower-cost the quantities are sufficiently small to indicate that the conclusion is incorrect. It's not that being non-coastal or low-cost is an indication of where the money is going (Portland, San Diego, and Boston are clear counter-examples), it's that the ones that are non-coastal and showing growth in VC funding are being driven by a small number of large investments that are outliers.

So, when it says the "biggest winners"... they really don't mean the biggest winners. They mean that there are some winners that are interesting non-coastal low-cost living locations, but these are interesting winners, not the biggest ones. And of course the big winners are still coastal and high cost of living cities. There's nothing contraindicating in the research that VC patterns have shifted. EXCEPT in the case of Austin, which interestingly is the opposite of what they claim about the biggest winners. Austin was a big loser in Q1.

Also, Portland is effectively "coastal" and not a cheap place to live. It's definitely closer to the coast than Seattle is.

You should pull Portland out. I just saw a 1 bedroom apartment list at $3499. Also, it's 1 hour from the coast, so it's a coastal city.

That Austin drop is staggering. And interesting to note that Dallas (?!) has 2x the venture investment that Austin does. Detroit had slightly more in Q1. Crazy.

I was surprised when the tech scene took off in Austin in the first place, given that the Dallas/Ft. Worth/Richardson area has a much higher concentration of tech companies and tech workers.

UTA has a great feeder school, though.

On the other hand, many Longhorns end up in the DFW area, so it's not just to Austin's benefit.

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