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Comment by timjahn | Hacker News Reader

I agree with you and my company Entrepreneurs Unpluggd is working to increase the highlighting of entrepreneurs elsewhere (including Detroit - would love to get your thoughts on the scene there -> tim at entrepreneursunpluggd).

Personally, I think TechCrunch will be much different in a few years in terms of it's popularity. Right now, Silicon Valley is the mecca for traditional tech startup folks. That is gradually (this is key - NOT overnight) changing though.

Detroit, Chicago, Boston, New York, Portland, Boulder, Durham, Miami, Cincinnati, Omaha, Des Moines, Kansas City, St. Louis, Austin....the list goes on and on.

Over time, the scenes in all these cities is going to continue to grow and more attention will be paid. There will be more "TechCrunches" of these areas, and I think the coverage will be much more distributed then it currently is.

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"Right now, Silicon Valley is the mecca for traditional tech startup folks. That is gradually (this is key - NOT overnight) changing though."

Actually, no.

You don't find Muslims making a journey to Detroit to worship Mohammed do you?

That's because Silicon Valley is actually a place not a concept. That being said there are other areas where other economic drivers are being augmented by technology drivers, NYC comes to mind.

However if you look at places that tried to "be" Silicon Valley (Rte 128 in Boston comes to mind) there are lots of failures scattered around.

Part of it is social, part of it is political, part of it is economics.

If you want to foster innovation remove barriers to innovation, outlaw non-competes, create a durable right for workers to keep what they make on their own time with their own gear.

What happens is people quit their jobs to build a competitor than can do it better/cheaper than where they worked. It weeds out non-innovators. It also frees up folks to quit and still work on stuff they know, they start creating networks that span companies and pretty soon lots of people know lots of people and creating a company gets easier, then all these companies being created and grown will help the intial capital suppliers do well, and their success will attract other sources of capital.

Strangely enough, if you could step out of the world trademarks treaty, and said "If you work in this zone you cannot be sued for software patent infringement nor may you file them." You might create a mini-boomlet right there :-)

Tech.li is trying to do that. They've got a long way to go in terms of quality, but they're collaborating with local bloggers writing about startups.

very cool - adding to RSS reader now

Agreed, thanks for pointing them out.

I know the Tech.li team (and founder Ed Domain) very well and they are a prime example of the type of publication I'm referring to.

Agree completely. Tech is becoming decentralized slowly but surely, and we're witnessing the emergence of startup hubs throughout the country at a rate like never before.

We aim to be the Techcrunch of our region, but it's so much bigger than that. It's about fostering community as it starts to develop in your region.

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