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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

> It's dead, we won't be able to save it, so let's move on.

I think rumours of the California start-up scene's demise are vastly exaggerated. Maybe we should wait proclaiming it 'dead' until it is no longer the top foundry for new start-ups world wide?

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Is it the top foundry? It depends on what sectors you look at, I believe. It's definitely still top in web technology. But in other areas I'm less sure.

One slice of the successful startup market is looking at tech IPOs, which are on the upswing again. This probably downplays the Valley scene, which focuses more on quick smallish exits (acquihires and other kinds of acquisitions), but does give a view of where the next-gen of large tech companies is coming from.

According to PWC's Q2 2013 tech IPO report [1], there were 13 North American tech IPOs:

   EVERTEC: $505m, Puerto Rico
   CDW: $395m, Chicagoland
   Tableau Software: $254m, Seattle
   Blackhawk Network: $230m, SF Bay Area
   Gogo: $187m, Chicagoland
   Gigamon: $128m, SF Bay Area
   Cyan: $88m, SF Bay Area
   Rally Software: $84m, Boulder CO
   ChannelAdvisor: $81m, Research Triangle NC
   Marketo: $79m, SF Bay Area
   Tremor Video: $75m, NYC
   Textura: $75m, Chicagoland
   Halogen Software: $55m, Ottawa Canada

The SF Bay Area is still the largest single source, with 4/13, but not in a dominating sort of way.

[1] http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/technology/publications/assets/ipo-...

edit: Oops, those are millions, not billions; fixed. Nobody is raising a half-trillion dollars in an IPO...

your numbers are off - took me a lot of tab switching on my tablet to figure out the mistake :) it should be millions, not billions, and they represent the proceedings (the amount raised on IPO), not the market cap.

It is just too expensive. I would like to see stats which shows it as 'the top foundry', perhaps only companies which raised $1M qualify?

It's dead in the "Microsoft is Dead" sense, which means that it's not actually out of business, but that it has ceased to be exciting, innovative or useful. Microsoft is still in business, but no one finds it very interesting anymore.

The VC-funded game that has taken over the Valley is now just a way for those who were preselected to win at birth to launder their inherited connections and make it look like they built something. It's for legacy rich kids to make the appearance that they created something, when the hard work was done by hired-gun software engineers getting 0.05% equity slices.

> Hard work

'Replaceable work' you mean? It's far easier to engineer good software than to pick a problem worth solving and actually fund & execute on this idea.

This replaceability is why you get 0.05% - take no risk, come late to the party - your reward will be less.

But many engineers are choosing to do exactly that with their micro-startup idea vs work for that 0.05% equity slice. Start up recruiters have a hard time and have to compete against Google hours & compensation or engineers going into business for themselves.

On top of the equity slice can often disappear from a firing whim, since they often expire soon after you stop working for the company. On top of that many employees who leave startup's don't actually buy the options, as the founders of ESO fund found out.

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