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Comment by KoryFerbet | Hacker News Reader

I live in Seattle so I'm a bit biased, but I really do think that it's a fantastic city for tech. All of the big dogs are here (amazon, google, facebook, Microsoft) but there are also a lot of very innovative and creative well known startups and smaller companies. (Cheezburger, Tippr, etc..).

I have also heard great things about Austin, I have spent some time there as well and I love it as a city. I just don't know much about it in relation to the tech market.

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I'm a little confused by the question ("up and coming" relates a different meaning to me than "outside silicon valley"), but I wouldn't call Seattle up and coming by my personal definition. Especially since Amazon, Microsoft, Nintendo, et al are there. The existence of smaller companies doesn't negate the fact that there are already huge, established players there and the city is already known to be a huge tech haven.

My opinion would point more towards something like Detroit. A city not well known for tech (and well known for not being an economic powerhouse). But with Dan Gilbert's "Webward Avenue" and Dan Izzo's "Bizdom U" startup accelerator (founded when YCombinator was still a baby), new tech is starting to trickle into Detroit. See also: Detroit Venture Partners, M@dison.

There's a backing of billionaires willing to put as much as they can into Detroit to make it a tech haven, and so far it's showing some progress. I don't live in or even near Detroit, but it's a pretty promising sign for a city (and state) suffering the full brunt of technology's impact on unskilled labor.

[1]http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2011/06/transfor...

[2]http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-izzo/go-midwest-young-entr...

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