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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

I wonder whether groups like this hadn't ought to stop doing grant/investment programs like this. You can't just buy a startup community, at least not for any amount we've seen spent to date. It has to grow organically.

What seems likely to happen here is that adverse selection will allocate these grants to companies with poorer prospects than the total pool of startups, thus creating a track record of failure for the area.

Maybe a better approach would be to offer the grants to any startup nationwide, with the proviso that they employ N people in STL.

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> You can't just buy a startup community

I don't know that I've seen it attempted before.

More generally, I think this is a very interesting development. As developers move into the cloud, staying in places like silicon valley requires a burn that might not be necessary.

Verrry interesting.

http://StartupChile.com is doing something quite similar. Dozens of startups get reimbursed for up to $40k of expenses.

There have been a lot of places that have tried it recently. There have been startup "accelerators" and seed funding thingers in non-hub cities popping up like wildfire. I know of programs that have run in Toronto, DC, Chicago, Atlanta, Edinburgh, Santiago and there are many others that I've forgotten. Some of those had public funding.

I think the key bit in tptacek's comment is, "not for any amount we've seen spent to date". You probably could buy a startup scene. But not for a laughable $500k. Both pg and Brad Feld have written on such. The gist, from memory, is that it'd take a whole lot more money and a couple decades.

What program like this exists in DC?

LaunchBox Digital started there, then moved to Durham, then moved back to traditional angel investing. In fact, most of the programs that I listed above at this point are defunct, which was kind of what I was getting at.

Yeah, what's key here is that there's more going on then just AG. I'm working with a group to launch a Founder Institute chapter here, for example. And we're working hand-in-hand with AG and a new seed fund that's popped up in the last year. No one initiative can build a community--rather AG's grants are a fruit of the community being built rather than a seed expected to start the whole thing off.

Yeah, I moved from NYC to STL a year ago. The rent differential was AMAZING :) Suddenly, the basics of life weren't a struggle.

Having a community of entrepreneurs around, however, has been a struggle. I started an all night programming group that meets once a month (meetup.com/allnightlong) and a social network for entrepreneurs (startlouis.com) that have helped address the community problem, scratching my own itch. Funding environment is getting better here, too. But it's far from perfect.

"You can't just buy a startup community, at least not for any amount we've seen spent to date. It has to grow organically."

I wouldn't be surprised if NYC does it. I think if you funded 40 companies at 250k each in grants then you could easily get a class as good as YC with the right people as judges, and considering they are already pumping 2 billion dollars into this Cornell Technion thing it seems likely that something like this will eventually happen.

NYC is doing a wide array of interesting things- they've run a few hackathons and have an app creation competition running right now (http://www.nycbigapps.com) with cash prizes and the possibility of becoming a TechStars finalist. They haven't gone as far as offering up huge grants, but I wouldn't surprised if something like that happened for Cornell Tech grads.

Disclaimer: I entered an app into the BigApps competition, so I'm partly biased in publicising it.

"You can't just buy a startup community..."

At least, not for that amount of money. But maybe they can. The first step is to try.

We do have the semblance of a startup community. It's very nacent, but hopefully this attracts more people. Anyone interested in hearing what's going on here, let me know. It's not overwhelming, but there's more than most people realize.

Please note that I'm not saying STL shouldn't build a startup community. I'm a fan of startups hosting in the Midwest (for obvious reasons). I'm saying that grant programs like this might not be the way to get there; good startups can take money from lots of different places, so the STL grant program might be left with a bunch of business-plan-startups that couldn't get money from anywhere else.

I think that's a totally fair assessment. The people backing it are more of the high level folks, testing out the idea--believe it or not, they've raised enough to do more than 10 grants but this is their test run. I'm sure they'll tweak as they go and pivot as necessary. Feedback like yours is great.

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