Why I broke up with Portland to build my startup… | Hacker News Reader

Why I broke up with Portland to build my startup…

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64 pointsdariusmonsef25 comments

Reminds of the time I wanted to start a startup in upstate NY. We were going to be purely web-based SaaS. I was working out of my home, and so were the other founders.

We approached the local IDA, because we were told that they would give grants to small businesses, especially in "high-tech". The gentleman I met said that he'd able to approve us for $30K. But, he wanted to know where our "manufacturing facility" would be. He just didn't get the concept of a web-based startup; he wanted to know where we would manufacture the software and ship it. Granted, this was 7 years ago. But that's when I decided to throw in the towel and move to the Bay Area.

"What Portland doesn’t have is capital. Founder friendly, fast moving seed capital."

The poster's site, COLOURlovers, apparently has over 500,000 registered users, ~195,000 UVs/month in the US (according to Compete) and a lot of engagement. It's not Facebook or Twitter of course, but it looks very solid for a niche community.

Which begs the question: why is outside capital needed here? Usage-wise, this site has enough scale relative to the niche that it should be able to monetize its popularity. This hardly seems like a case of needs-more-employees, needs-more-servers, needs-more-marketing -- things that capital is best applied to.

On the flip side, as a niche community play, COLOURlovers isn't exactly the kind of site with the kind of growth potential startup investors have traditionally looked for. So while there may be a lot of "founder friendly, fast moving seed capital" out there right now, so the fact that the founder "just raised a large seed round from some of the top VCs and Angels" demonstrates the fact that there are an awful lot of angels and VCs who are stretching to put their money to work. In the long-run, I'm not sure that benefits founders of sites like COLOURlovers even if outside capital provides some immediate comfort.

We didn't start with 500k users. (And Compete's traffic numbers are utter garbage, btw.)

And we are bootstrap profitable, but we have some big things in the works... things that do in fact require more resources to tackle well.

There is fast moving, founder friendly capital... And yes, we were able to raise a round. But not from any investors in Portland. I live in SF now and raised the round there.

And I'm all for bootstrapping. I think you learn invaluable lessons when you're operating on your own dollars and needing to move quickly. With that being, said... we grew to a point where additional resources would better help us execute on a vision that we bootstrapped to clarity.

I'm flattered that the author thinks that Kongregate is one of Portland's great web companies, but that's only partially true. Our headquarters are in SF, and our engineering team is (largely) in Portland. Our investors are all from Silicon Valley or Seattle.

Which is more evidence for the author's point - there's not much of an investor community in Portland. I've idly wondered whether that's an opportunity - so far all I've done is set up an angel.co profile that says I'll talk to Portland startups.

Hey Jim. I think it's worth it being a partial truth to include you guys as a Portland Startup :)

I in fact live in SF too, and most of our investors are in the bay area.

I moved down to the Bay Area from Portland in 2009 to found a company. Sometimes I wish I was still in Portland, although less now that I know about the big scary fault zone.

Coaches are on the same spectrum as advisors and investors… but not on the end you want. Paul Graham once cautioned me about advisors: “Be careful about getting advisors. An advisor is just somebody who doesn’t believe in you or your idea enough to invest in it.”

I like this. However, it's not unfeasible to think that there are some people whose role is better as an advisor rather than an investor. Maybe they have the time and lack the money.

I think writing off advisors entirely to embrace investors is a bad idea. Mainly because there's a divergence of goals: maybe an advisor wants the best for a company in the long-term while an investor might be swayed to give advice that benefits his investment more in the short-term.

I'm not writing off advisors... 2 paragraphs down I say:

"With that being said, we do have two official advisors. Both are active entrepreneurs who have a ton of amazing experience. They’ve continued to give me advice and support without asking for anything in return. In appreciation for their time and their continued support, we made them advisors. I also have dozens of fellow founders that I count as advisors. Which brings up another piece of wisdom: Get advice from people actively in the game."

Not everywhere needs to become Silicon Valley. IT is well-trodden ground with established players and power centers now. Smaller cities like Portland would do better promoting emerging industries than trying to catch up to the web startup bus 15 years after it left the station.

I don't think everywhere needs to be SV. But, I do think that the power centers are less important in the web space. Web ideas can be built, launched and highly successful in very short periods of time. When that is possible, the actual location of the startup is less important... so long as they have a great community to support them. NYC is catching up to SF. Chicago / Austin / Boulder are having success growing great startup communities.

I'd just like to see Portland's scene improved.

And RE "Smaller cities like Portland would do better promoting emerging industries than trying to catch up to the web startup bus 15 years after it left the station."

It may have left 15 years ago, but if you run your ass off, you can still catch it.

SV is a special place that combines all sorts of things: talent, capital, ideas, culture. Most places lack one or two of these things. For example, where I live I'd say all but the ideas are lacking. The point is that Portland could be the biotech, health care systems, green energy, transportation,etc powerhouse with capital. The lack of capital effects all industries equally.

For the sake of conversation I might say that you can replace "Portland" with any city in the US. As I mentioned in the post (A Startup Community Needs 4 Things: Ideas, Talent, Ambition, and Capital.) You can probably find greater and lesser amounts of each in any city. And like Portland, most will be shortest on the Capital. But the capital world is changing and I think there will be more opportunities for startups to get off the ground wherever they are based.

You say you want to see Portland's scene improve, but I might suggest what you are really asking for is Portland's scene to change. I am a web developer here in Portland (been here for 10 years, love it). I do freelancing and don't run a startup, so obviously we're in different situations, but in my opinion what makes Portland Portland is its ease of living -- cheap rent, good cheap food, low traffic, mild climate, and most importantly: an utter lack of ambition. I grew up in the NYC area, and the difference is striking (it's subtle, but very pervasive) -- people just don't really care that much about achieving extraordinary things. And I don't mean this in a bad way at all -- I don't think there's anything intrinsically good or bad about being super ambitious, it's just a choice that we all make for our own goals and personalities. So it makes a lot of sense to me that Portland doesn't have a startup culture anything like S.V. -- and I feel that if it did, it would cease to be Portland.

BTW, this is coming from a place of respectful discussion and sharing of opinions -- I work downtown, if you ever want to meet up for coffee and discuss more, that would be fun (contact info in my profile).

I definitely want a part of Portland's scene to change... Not the entire scene. I too love Portland for "cheap rent, good cheap food, low traffic, mild climate..." But I'm ambitious and have friends are as well. I realize that this isn't the main attitude (and I'm agreeing that being one way or the other isn't good / bad.) that Portland has. What I want is a better community for those in the web startup scene to be better supported to try and change the world.

Always happy to discuss. I'm in Portland every month or so. And I love coffee.

Put a bird on it

Amen.

I just moved back from SF, just spent 5 years in Portland. I love the city and the tech scene is awesome, but Portland has a capital problem like Darius mentioned.

I just quit my job Friday. Should I move to SF, instead of Austin?

Um. That's not enough information to give you any kind of meaningful advice.

Nah, I'd go with Frenchglen, Oregon.

Not enough information.

But keep in mind that living expenses in SF are astronomical.

This is really important. Wish I'd known just how astronomical before I came out here (fortunately only for a limited time at first, but still).

Also depends on where in SF / Bay Area you live. For example, my rent in San Leandro (45min BART ride into SF city) is half of what it was in SF Mission.

Cool. I was thinking about subleasing in the Mission. I'll have to check it out.

come to Dallas! the scene is really starting to pick up.. http://launchDFW.com

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