First month as a start-up founder in Portland, OR | Hacker News Reader

First month as a start-up founder in Portland, OR

trekdek.wordpress.com

47 pointsturoczy11 comments

Are you moving to Portland to found a startup or to look for a job? Your experiences would be very different depending on which one it is.

If you're looking for a job, going to tech events and networking meetups is great idea. If you're building a startup, all you need to do is go head down and work on a product/prototype, which you can do anywhere, at least until you get to the stage where you're actively fundraising.

Finding a cofounder will be a lot easier if you already have a prototype/early version to show that you're not just an "idea guy".

For the non-programmer this is something of a catch 22. Unfortunately ideas guy's are a dime a dozen. And it really just isn't hard to have new ideas. The hard part is separating the good ideas from the bad ones.

For a programmer you can usually mock up something in a weekend - or maybe a month - enough to either validate or kill the idea. Unfortunately the non-programmer typically has to; a) find a programmer b) explain the idea c) hang around while it gets implemented then d) when it doesn't work, throw some new parameter into the mix and repeat from step (b).

All to often the ideas guy just keeps having ideas on how to turn things around. So a bad idea can have a life all of its own. Meanwhile the programmer of course isn't getting paid, and there seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel.

So catch 22 - ideas are nothing without the programmer - the programmer would rather work on his own ideas.

If I had a nickle for each person who comes to me with an idea for fixing credit-card fraud, or for eradicating spam, or for some other boil-the-ocean scheme, well, I'd have $1.75...

Basically a founder needs to have either cash, or a skill that an early startup needs. And unfortunately no, it doesn't need a lawyer, or a salesman, or a marketing bloke, or, dare I say it, an "ideas guy".

I'm not sure what the OP was - but it's hard to convince a programmer when all you bring to the table is an idea.

I didn't see taxes mentioned. Portland is a fantastic place for technology, but you're looking at very high taxation and the city government is rather anti-business. Great place to live, otherwise, though. Especially if episodes of Portlandia don't turn you off (because after 30 years, I can tell you that they're not far off from the truth).

Agree on the taxes and anit-business attitude of city/county govt (but then again, who elects these people?). Advice I heard once: Start the business in Oregon when profits are nil, move to Washington when you start making serious money as an individual.

Are you a Northampton Townie who got the irresistible urge to migrate to to Portland, Oregon?

Ha I'm gettig a lot more views when you posted this.

It's a really solid post. And it's dead on about the pluses and minuses of Portland. Well done.

as a Portlander myself, I would agree entirely. Many of the individuals in tech industry here are from CA and came here to live not work. Though I found you can have a successful startup and a good life as well. Just balance and in PDX you are more or less forced to balance.

I'm on the East Coast and don't know much about Portland, but I enjoy "think different" posts on HN a lot, so this really grabbed me.

The dream of the 90s is alive.. in Portland.

Put a bird on it.

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