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Comment by bluedino | Hacker News Reader

The location doesn't matter. Companies will pop up where they are going to pop up. Everyone writes an essay about why their city is so great and you should move there so you can build your company.

Case in point: Salt Lake City/Provo in the 80's

You had companies like Novell and WordPerfect that dominated entire markets. Why Salt Lake City? The weather isn't "great" (unless you like to ski). It's not that large of a metro area, barely over a million people. There are a lot of Mormons (they're the weird people that don't drink caffeine). It's not diverse at all, just a bunch of white Mormons.

But it worked.

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a) Mormons drink caffeine. I am a card-carrying Mormon, so if you argue this point with me your sources had better be pretty good.

b) Sure, companies pop up where they pop up, but for a city to become a hub for something, you need more than a couple of companies popping up. I wouldn't say Orem was exactly a tech hub in the 80s. You could argue the point better now, judging from the recent BuzzFeed article.

>> Mormons drink caffeine.

I had some friends who were Mormon growing up, they didn't drink caffeinated soda, coffee, tea, and of course alcohol. Is that uncommon in the Mormon world?

The rules changed and last I heard it was something along the lines of only hot caffeinated drinks were forbidden, so no coffee tea etc, and things like Coke and Pepsi are fine.

Rules haven't changed. They just issued a clarification. Most of us have been drinking all the Dr. Pepper we want for years.

There are all kinds of Mormons. Almost all of them I know drink caffeinated soda. There are definitely Mormons who don't, but I'd put them in a minority. It's basically people extrapolating from the dietary code, which disallows coffee and tea. They figure that must be because of caffeine, so they don't drink Coke either. (Mind you, I've never met a Mormon who doesn't eat chocolate, so I don't think their extrapolation is very logical, but who am I to tell anyone how to live their religion.)

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