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Comment by ivankirigin | Hacker News Reader

The scene in Boston isn't as good as New York of SF. I'd imagine the location is the biggest fault of TechStars.

But the model is so good, that I don't really like the "rival" status.

There are positive sum effects from a lots of early stage venture firms, and lots of startups. To illustrate this, just try to ask any YC or TechStars company for advice. You'll notice that they are probably both going to be nice and helpful. That's because that's a characteristic of early stage startups. It's all good.

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Isn't techstars in boulder?

Yes, they are. Or their footer and about pages are eerily misleading.

Yes, and I'm sure Boulder ranks close to or behind Boston. Which seems to me a worse location than NYC or SF.

The reason Boston and Palo Alto are such great locations are due to the locations of the elite neighboring universities and abundant reverse brain-drain

I would say being from Boulder is one of the biggest strengths. Vibrant and helpful tech community out of the pressure bubble.

  pressure bubble

What? That wasn't my impression at all, though I was only there for ~8 months. That thinking seems like making lemonade out of lemons. There are orders of magnitude more angels and VCs that understand the web in silicon valley. That means there are that many more companies and sources of advice and support. You can't really get around that - it really does matter.

Keep in mind that this is coming from someone based in Boston that goes to NYC all the time.

Everyone has their style of how they see early stage startups, and how they do it. I've heard many friends refer to larger tech hubs as 'pressure bubbles' for early stage companies because of all the hype that can snowball around their company.

We really value the beautiful surroundings Boulder has, as well as the vibrant tech scene.

We also have an extensive list of mentors that regularly meet with the teams. http://techstars.org/mentors

Snowball is certainly a good analogy. In my brief experience, success yields to more success, especially with business development deals. If you're close to a company, you're more likely to do business with it. That makes a big network effect from the number of startups in the area.

So your stress level could snowball, or you might leverage strength over strength. Even if stress were an issue, my happiness is definitely tied more to the direction Tipjoy is going than the excess of companies around me.

Unfortunately, the other side to my original comment was lost. I think TechStars is great, and more people doing startups is great. I didn't mean for this to become a debate about the relative strengths of cities.

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