Why Chance Encounters Work | Hacker News Reader

Why Chance Encounters Work

growdetroit.com

11 pointsBallinBige9 comments

As I mentioned in the posts comments, one thing the valley has that many cities don't is a completely different perspective on failure. In the valley, if you don't have a successful exit on your startup, no one jumps on you in a bad way. Everyone understands the challenge and knows you learned from it. First thing people say are, "So, what's next?".

This allows people to try things more and take risk. Something that our Michigan and Detroit culture don't have built into our makeup. It's definitely changing and sites like GrowDetroit and their community are making big strides in changing this mentality.

This 10000000%

I just got interviewed in the State News and the reporter kept asking me these same questions about getting over failure. I told her I have never failed, not even one time. from my beef jerky enterprise in high school all through college, I just made adjustments.

I gave her an anecdote about selling pink and yellow lemonade, and if i was selling way more pink than yellow, yellow lemonade didnt 'fail' my feelings wernt hurt, it wasnt a personal feat that made me rise up above it. I just adjust.

She didnt really like the answer so asked me again, and none of it made it in the paper.

you are a warrior, hustler and have the 'can do' attitude towards business. big ups

I marvel at Silicon Valley everytime I visit. Here we're a tiny minority and in SV its like visiting the company town. I imagine that's what it must be for a Hungarian car manufacturer to visit Detroit.

I think we have to work hard in Michigan to encourage chance encounters. How do we do that? Pick a single place at a set time to meet every week. Make it within walking distance of a university. Do it for each Michigan city with startup activity.

Do you have a Michigan startup? In Lansing all the user groups are having a DemoCamp at the Michigan Historical Museum on Dec 15. Sign up to speak here:

https://adobeformscentral.com/?f=OQitLN6urkwqMVB8csMG4A

It's not only rough doing a startup in Detroit, it's hard to find good people in Detroit, specifically designers and developers that have done "web" stuff before or are even interested in it. You have a lot of people who have worked for the big 3 or GE, but not too many who have picked up "newer" technologies and methodologies that a startup would use.

The question is: are they not here at all, or are they disconnected by virtue of the lack of a community element. I find the former hard to believe -- some of the biggest tech innovators in the US have come out of the state.

With regard to the latter, that's one fight we're making our own, in the hopes that our combined efforts can foster a more united scene here in MI.

they definitely are here - just very fragmented

Yes, fragmentation is a problem, but we have hired a new developer about every month and half since I have been at the startup I work for and the hiring process is rough.

Anyways if anyone knows of a User Experience designer in Michigan we are looking.

http://www.authenticjobs.com/jobs/10649/product-designer

We have looked at the School of Information at UM Ann Arbor, but haven't really heard anything back from anyone there.

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