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Comment by brianstorms | Hacker News Reader

After getting to know the Boulder-area TechStars people, I tried to get a TechStars "chapter" going in San Diego back in 2010 and like so many things about the startup world in San Diego, it just wasn't going to happen. The San Diego M-F 9-5 lifestyle always was more important than taking over the world. Plus, in general I found mentoring San Diego tech startups to be essentially pointless: nobody listened, nobody cared, so why even bother. Finally I found the core TechStars organization to be a bunch of cats, un-herdable, no "there" there. I never liked the whole "star" thing as it reeked of "rock stars" and was a little too "bro" for me. Bottom line, it was screamingly clear TechStars was never going to compete with YC (which I've never been a fan of either, but at least they're organized and determined and focused), so no surprise when it never did.

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I can't comment on the TechStars aspect but your high level review of San Diego startup scene is 100% on point.

> The San Diego M-F 9-5 lifestyle always was more important than taking over the world.

Sounds positive to me. Fuck your “world changing” startup idea. That’s just religion. You want me to work hard, treat me with respect and pay me (in that order).

edit: mark my words, there will come a time when you lose a highly valuable employee because you thought it was easier to treat people like a kubernetes configuration.

Its a startup. You will become fantastically rich as a founder/early employee if the startup takes over the world. You don't take over the world working a 9-5.

People entering this environment SHOULD know what they're signing up for. Its not like startups are the only jobs out there.

You will become fantastically rich as a founder/early employee if the startup takes over the world.

While this is still generally true for founders, it hasn't been true for early employees in over a decade. VCs decided to capture all of that surplus for themselves.

I think if we made starting up more accessible & possible, if healthcare & child card & housing weren't a mess, we'd actually see far far far far more positive world changing shit coming. And many tiers of merely good positive economic contributors below that.

Startups should be accessible. It's a fault & a problem that so many possibilities have been winnowed away. The glory of 120 hours a week is not the only path.

Health insurance coupled to employment is one hell of systematic advantage for large companies when competing for labor. Bigger company = bigger risk pool.

There is nothing wrong with being a startup and being solidly profitable, you know?

Only VC-backed startups need to "take over the world" because the VCs need their 10x rockstar.

A company doing $50 million per year with a handful of employees is going to be way more profitable for everybody than a VC-fueled rocket that has a 99% chance of flaming out. Remember MP3.com? Lots of San Diego tech people still do ...

I view the original assessment as "San Diego tech workers understand the reality of their value and can't be taken for a ride by venture capitalists--woe is me."

I found that San Diego tech workers generally have higher clue than most geographic areas.

The less experienced are very solid workers and learn really quickly. However, they're not 4 year Stanford students with filthy rich parents who can afford to go bankrupt multiple times. They're coming from community colleges and state schools, and they need to earn money. In return, they'll work their ass off for you.

In addition, there are quite a few very experienced greybeards scattered in that scene (tech in San Diego goes WAY back--Linkabit spawned a bunch and computers were huge early--Silicon Beach Software and PC Power and Cooling for example). However, they are going to demand appropriate compensation and will not put up with bullshit. I love working with them.

Don't like the San Diego tech scene? Your loss--my gain.

Shout out to ComputorEdge magazine :)

Used to run ads in 1988-90 in ComputorEdge for my first startup (Coconut Computing; we ran the COCONET online service in San Diego then). Didn't they change their name to ByteBuyer? We used to call them ByteBuyor to pay homage to the original name.

Nice! Yes that final O was a bit idiosyncratic, I forget the reasoning for it. I listed my BBS in their directory.

My memory (a little misty) was that they started as ByteBuyer and then renamed to ComputorEdge. At least in 92 they were called ComputorEdge.

I did have a stash of them somewhere but haven’t seen them for a long time.

Nice to reminisce!

Nah the original assessment was too many San Diego tech workers would rather go surfing or play networked first-person shooter games than get something momentous done. There was always something more important to do than do the work and build the thing and make a difference in the world. I did the San Diego startup scene for 25 years. I worked at MP3.com; employee 12 I think. I also started 3 companies in La Jolla, was very active in the SD startup scene for many years. There are great engineers there, don't get me wrong. But the work ethic is simply different than SV, which is just the way it is, not gonna change. I don't think I'll ever do another startup in San Diego though. Elsewhere, sure, but not there.

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