[amirnathoo]

I think this mistakes cause and effect. The hypothesis of the article is that new trends, like the cloud, being exploited globally make the Valley less important. But I think that other places are adopting Valley trends, like exploiting the cloud, because the Valley is becoming more important. And the reason the situation is improving for entrepreneurs in those other places is because they are copying Valley trends.

I know Cambridge, UK best since that's where I'm from. And increasingly, new companies are forming there with little funding and young, highly technical founders. More people there are reading TechCrunch, have heard of Y Combinator, and are more able to re-locate to the Valley thanks mainly to the spread of knowledge. In the future, the startup visa might come into play too.

The Valley's culture is going global, and other locations will benefit as a result, but the main beneficiary is the Valley itself.

[webwright]

I dunno-- the Seattle startup scene has seen pretty insane growth over the last 5 years... It was purportedly nearly non-existant 5-7 years ago. Harj and I threw together a YC Seattle meetup that was over 100 people in about a week.

You could attend a startup related event in Seattle almost every day of the week.

I did some really weak science and found:

"In 2007, 45 of 110 (41%) acquired companies were in the Valley. In 2008, only 18 of 115 (16%) were."

(whole post with sources: http://bit.ly/bDpam)

I also (with some help) crunched all Crunchbase data here: http://bit.ly/Mapl1

The globalization make sense to me. 5 years ago, you couldn't even roll the dice without a million bucks. Now plenty of startups spin up with pennies. And while the Valley has a few advantages, the really CLEAR advantage that it has (which has diminishing value for the earliest stages) has always been the huge number of investors.

Still, though-- starting up might be getting easier, but when you need funding relocation might still be right thing to do.

[mixmax]

Thanks for the research. Just a little nitpick - could you please not use URL-shorteners. It's nice to know where you're going before you hit the link.

[ojbyrne]

I think Seattle was crawling with startups in the mid-nineties (the windows 3.1 era). Things go in cycles.

[_delirium]

There've been a decent number in the years in between too. Farecast (founded 2003, acquired 2008) and Twango (founded 2004, acquired 2007) come to mind as successful examples.