What's the point of 'Boston vs. Silicon Valley'? | Hacker News Reader

What's the point of 'Boston vs. Silicon Valley'?

boston.com

37 pointsilamont9 comments

Pretty good takedown. Vivek Wadhwa comes across as completely clueless and unwilling to actually engage in debate involving facts.

In my opinion it's a serious problem with the valley. There's legions of cheerleaders, trying to outcheer each other, ignore facts, spouting off on whatever the latest euphoria is ("hackathons" and "mafias") and just coming across as ignorant twits. I realize there's lots of smart people there, but I'd guess they're mostly working, not attending networking events and writing articles for Techcrunch.

http://lesswrong.com/lw/lt/the_robbers_cave_experiment/

That was a great article. Thanks for sharing!

It looks like we have a couple competing stories, so here's a repost of my take. I think many of the people posting in defense of Boston are doing so without the benefit of history. In fact, the lack of any references to 128 pretty much guarantees it. Here's a little story:

In the mid-70s and 80s, if you wanted to do something new, you went to 128 or Silicon Valley. The 128 ring was huge, and you couldn't walk 20 feet without seeing a company that was building hardware, selling successfully, and making a lot of money. However, as the economy took bumps over the following decades, the sector contracted and consolidated. But it wasn't staying here, everything consolidated on the west coast.

When DEC became Compaq (became HP), it was a sad day. Not because DEC was doing anything particularly cool (the writing had been on the wall for Alpha and VMS for a while), but because it was the last 128 giant still standing. Boston.com still writes articles about it to this day:

http://www.boston.com/yourtown/cambridge/articles/2011/02/15...

Sure, companies are still doing things in MA (Boston, specifically). But what we have today are a few poster boys in the bio, chem, and robotics sectors that make the evening news and let us feel good about what's coming out of MA. I can almost guarantee that if you transplanted a 70s geek from Boston to the SV of today, they'd feel right at home (minus the lack of wood-paneled station wagons), but doing the reverse would yield nothing but utter horror. We are still a booming tech sector, but it's simply not a place for innovation (no offense to the other locals posting).

What's the point of inward focused echo-chamber babble? Focus on finding ideas outside the echo-chamber, surprising and delighting customers and building a useful product.

Then sell the hell out of it.

This is also why I hate VC's (PG included), they force you to become inward focused rather than seeking external inputs (IE: Customers). As Gödel proved, you cannot determine a systems consistency within itself.

>> This is also why I hate VC's (PG included), they force you to become inward focused rather than seeking external inputs (IE: Customers).

In my humble and limited experience with both PG and VCs, the focus has always been on customers.

I'm surprised that you include PG in your sweeping statement. He is a pretty outspoken advocate of launching early, listening to customers, and iterating.

Do you mind sharing where you get your perspective?

It's mostly all included in my comment. But Paul is simply a lesser evil. I'm a bit older than most founders - I remember the dotcom bubble. I watched the absurdity as vulture capital tore through many good developers in the late 1990's early 2000's. I've come to realize that anything that takes away from your iteration loop kills you.

The instant you take VC money (Paul's included) you now have a focus away from your customers towards inward interests. You have to worry about raising money, about the next round, about that meeting next week. Over time, customers stuffer. Right now Ycombinator is the darling of the "startup" scene, but my opinion is that the "startup" scene is a bad place to be for building a company. (Great place for a quick exit though! But the odds of that are poor.)

Whatever their intentions, VC money alters your fledgling company in a harmful way. A quick browse at all the news items on this site about "navigating VC world" and raising capital, and convincing VC's of X should be evidence enough. That time is better spent navigating product strategy, raising customers and selling product.

Vivek may have his flaws, but Scott's critique misses one of the most important points about Silicon Valley culture.

Those SV events and hackathons here are not output-oriented. The communities that come out of such events are what is really powerful. Of course Startup Weekend companies won't be overfly successful, but the connections made at Startup Weekend's might.

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