Does (startup) Location Really Matter? | Hacker News Reader

Does (startup) Location Really Matter?

regulargeek.com

11 pointsbrlewis9 comments

I'm also in the midst of creating a startup, but in canada and i can tell you location does matter. Whether its finding like minded people to partner with or finding good programmers or finding investors that know what the internet is, location is key.

If you were to go out to Calgary for example (huge oil producing town, for those that dont know it - everyone's there for oil) and tried to find someone that wanted to invest in a startup instead of oil, you'd be there forever and chances are you wouldn't find 1 person with any kind of relevant experience or knowledge. You'd be pitching to rich people without useful backgrounds. They would be expecting immaculate pro formas (which very few startups have) and would laugh you out of the room when you asked them for 100k to seed anything. 100k isnt worth their time, it costs them 400k to simply do a background check and due diligence on you.

so in short, location dictates the people that are around you and yes, that matters more than anything.

Then ask for $500k for an oil-related software startup. If location dictates the people around you, then you have to adapt your ideas to the people around you.

If the mountain won't come to Mahomet...

I have yet to use a programming language that throws CodeWasWrittenInTheWrongCityException. Its a good thing, too, because I am certainly in the wrong city.

Being the guy who spent 4 years in Wyoming doing a startup before moving to Chicago last year, I'd say yes.

Not so much about the location, as much as it's about the support system you have in place and accessibility of people who you can have around to help you at the different phases of what you're doing that's critical.

What support system have you found in Chicago?

Nil, really. It's just related to my "day" job really and using that + the web as a surrogate. It's much too big a place and too decentralize to really work for me like I think it would for me on the east coast (Where I'm from)

But it's just stuff that I discovered here that if someone had told me YEARS ago in Wyoming, would've helped us be a lot more successful a lot sooner. But it's stuff that no one knew to tell me, because there's no one on the ground who has the experience to be able to say anything.

And yeah that place is an anomaly but still. Sometimes just being connected to a larger place can raise your profile and make what you do 'seem' more legit.

It's strange.

How's Atlanta look? I know http://www.firethornmobile.com/ started here (I interviewed with them) and was bought by Qualcomm for about 240 million.

I am about to try my second startup and am looking to try for angel money this time. Any ATL resources anyone knows about are appreciated.

I quite like Atlanta. In the last 4 years the community around startups has grown nicely, from the Goog moving into town to ATLhack growing from 4 guys to ... 20 guys! And with GaTech, lots of great potential hires.

Angle money is a different thing though. It definitely exists, it just is just as that interested in internet startups as hardware / biotech.

You're about a day late for Startup Riot.

Here's an excellent resource for wannabe ATL entrepreneurs: http://atllogos.com/startup.html

A lot of the ATL startup chatter is on Twitter.

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