Tim Ferriss found Silicon Valley was too 'closed-minded' and moved to Austin
businessinsider.com
businessinsider.com
In my experience the average startup scene (angels, VCs, tech talents, etc) are pretty much all bush league when compared to Silicon Valley, despite some of the glaring flaws of SV startup scene. There are exceptions to the rules, but I was mostly unimpressed during my time there.
Austin Ventures was the biggest VC in town back then (probably still is), and I've heard that the unwritten rule for the firm is that they do not invest in first time founders.
That tells you how risk-averse and "open minded" Austin tech scene is.
But with Tim Ferriss's reputation and background, Austin is a great place to be because he gets to be the big fish in the small, growing pond. I'm sure he's doing very well at the local speaker scene.
You mean his reputation as a bullshit artist? http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2009/01/08/5-time-management-t...
But yeah, he'd command very good speaker rates over there ;)
> 6) Golden Gate and tech are terrorist targets, and I don't like being close to the bullseye. This is based on good information from friends who work full-time in threat assessment.
Real lessons in courage.
"Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own."
In the past, as far as I know, the only way to do this was to impose through the judicial process because of limits in organizational capability.
If so, while it's true that the scale was more limited, there are certainly ample examples of extrajudicial responses for unpopular ideas and actions, from simple social ostracizing, up to getting tarred and feathered (which happened to British loyalists during the American Revolution).
Previously you could at best expect to impose on a relatively small geographic area around you, and it was much harder to organize and needed a majority to agree with the action. It seems like the mobs, like before, are comprised of a minority while the quiet majority is trying to avoid the crosshairs.
Unfortunately that quiet majority voted Trump when no one was looking. In the same way as belittling your partner rarely leads to anything good, doing the same at scale in a democracy does the same.
I'm a native Texan[0] and I have to say, I wonder where all of the angst about gentrifying Texas has come from over the last twenty years. Everyone has been gentrifying Texas for as long as I've been alive[1]. I watched my hometown go from a sleepy Dallas bedroom suburb 30 minutes from anything to six-figures of population and now a proper business headquarters in its own right. It even has its own live music venue and three (THREE!) actual rail public transportation stations. I never thought I'd see the day.
Nobody seemed to much care when it was Californians[2] selling off their million-dollar beach houses and buying four-acre ranchettes in the Dallas, Houston, and Austin suburbs. But now that Californians[2] are selling off their two-million-dollar inland houses and buying townhouses in the city, people cry foul.
What do people expect to happen when a lot of folks show up and want to live in an area? Folks have always gone where the jobs are and now some of those jobs pay a shitload of money and are actually located inside the urban area. I mean, I guess we could keep doing the other thing we've been doing in abundance, which is making one solid Metroplex from the Red River to Hillsboro, but that seems a little wasteful these days, especially since the reservoirs don't look like they can keep up...
0 - I write this only as "where I come from," not as any particular authority on anything besides my own vision.
1 - A lot longer than the average tech worker these days, for sure.
2 - Not a dog on Californians, just they're the most common folks to pack up and move east, particularly since moving west gets a little damp.
Another story: anybody remember what used to be under what is now Jerryworld out in Arlington next to the Ballpark[2]? I do, a bunch of houses that people had owned since the the 40s, all bulldozed so somebody could build a new stadium and eminent domained out of existence by the city. Think that stops anybody, new arrival or long-time resident, from going there for a football game or a concert? Nope.
I dunno what my overall point is except that things change, people do things that other people don't like, and life moves on. That's the way it has been since before I was on this planet and will be that way after I'm gone unless the heat wave of doom kills us all. Just, now, it's happening more in those areas that used to be "crime-ridden inner cities," which is probably more good than bad given we're covering the rest of the state with pavement at our own peril.
0 - Great movie.
1 - Not to be outdone by the Fort Worth Startlegram's breathless editorials about how development in Far North Fort Worth is going to ruin everything.
2 - Lest my Rangers get off the hook, they've also begged for taxpayer money to build their shiny new stadium and Arlington used eminent domain to boot one landowner (versus 150 for Jerryworld) off before the stadium could be built.
The questions are never answered, and the counter accusations are aggressive charicatures that most often has little relation to what was claimed.
I personally find this more scary than McCarthyism because while it used the judicial process, the current attitude is to rule by mob with no process and without hearing both sides.
Our democracy is fragile and rely on us respecting the rule of law . These people have the power to ruin people’s lives and use it. They should be ashamed for risking our democracy in this way for short term gain, in the naive belief that democracy is the default state of a society.
Saying this in such a generic form, without actually mentioning what any of the topics or dissenting opinions are, raises a red flag for me.
Ferriss indicated he doesn't want to be involved particularly in startups anymore, negating that advantage of living in SV, he was NOT claiming that Austin is a good or better place for startups.
As for close-minded, I believe he is saying something very similar to what Sam Altman wrote in a recent essay; just so everyone knows what to disagree/agree with.
I, a New Yorker, have zero opinion on either place.