Ask HN: What cities in the US have a growing startup/entrepreneur community? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What cities in the US have a growing startup/entrepreneur community?

17 pointstimjahn16 comments

We're looking to start bringing our Entrepreneurs Unpluggd (http://www.entrepreneursunpluggd.com) events to other cities soon and I've been surprised at the cities that have amazing growing entrepreneur startup scenes (Indianapolis, Kansas City, Des Moines, to name a few). I'm curious what else is out there.

Does your city/area have a growing startup/entrepreneur scene/community? Where?

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In Michigan Ann Arbor has a large startup community and ecosystem. Most of the states VC and angel community is in Ann Arbor.

East Lansing has a small but very active and growing community, check out the group Hackers and Hustlers on Facebook. The city of East Lansing sponsors two incubators, a regular one and another which is limited to MSU students.

There are also small communities in Grand Rapids, Midland and Kalamazoo. Grand Rapids just had a lean startup workshop and GVSU has its own YC style incubator.

Kalamazoo just started a Hackers and Hustlers chapter and they've got another group that meets regularly with people doing pitches.

If you're considering coming to Michigan let me know and I will try to help you.

May want to add Detroit in there too :)

do you think Ann Arbor has more of a scene than Detroit?

My home area of Boulder, Colorado does. When I left the US 8 years ago, it was a very nice college town with some computer companies, but nothing that exciting that I knew of. Now, there's a Tech Stars (the original, I think), the Foundry group, a ton of software start-ups, biotech companies (some of which existed before to be fair), and even at least one solar power- start-up. Not bad for a town of 100,000!

I've heard great things about the Boulder scene! Do you know personally of any events that happen on a regular or semi-regular basis and are well attended?

Out of curiosity, what are people doing for living arrangements, these days? Some years ago, I had a friend who had to live out in... Longmont?, due to prices. And those bedroom communities seemed to be just growing and growing.

At the time, Boulder had some pretty strong growth limits/restrictions. Which made the community enjoyable to be in, but very pricey. I imagine those have not changed.

San Diego has an active and growing community, and there's been a lot of growth in events, meetups, and venues recently. Even the funding community is starting to get its act together.

I am heading to San Diego Tomorrow. Anything going on this week?

Good to know! Do you have any links to events, etc.? Would love to learn more about the scene there.

SD Tech Scene has a pretty list, and Brant Cooper has a San Diego Startup list email that goes out on Mondays.

http://www.sdtechscene.org/

Phoenix and the area around it is actually currently booming with startup activity. Arizona State is supporting a ton of startup efforts, there's a new incubator that just launched and another incubator planning to open it's doors at the end of the summer. It's all very exciting to watch as there didn't use to be much activity at all.

Nashville and Austin. Perhaps Austin has been ahead of the curve a bit with SXSW, but Nashville is really starting to take off with healthcare tech.

The Triangle area, North Carolina... Durham / Raleigh / RTP / Chapel Hill.

Los Angeles is very "stop and go". Something like EU might help.

"Stop and go" in the sense that there are lots of good events, then nothing for awhile, then lots of good events again? Trying to understand exactly what you mean by "stop and go".

Sorry for being unclear. Lots of action, then dead for a while, a long while, then some action again. As an exercise, just look at how many hacker/entrepreneur/tech scene related meetups there are in LA (hundreds), and how many of those have a meeting planned or have any regular conversation (maybe one or two).

From a start-up point of view, this city lacks structure; if we have a program were every xyz date a program begins and ends then that might help bring an even flow.

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