[larrykubin]

I met the guy in the article at SXSW, and he is starting a co-working company, which is essentially a group of people who split the cost of a working space. This is nothing like YCombinator. They aren't giving seed money, etc.

This is more like what IndyHall does in Philly:

http://www.indyhall.org/

His second goal is to network together the various startups around Austin. Austin is always mentioned as a "startup hub", but living here it doesn't really feel that way. Maybe that can change. We tend to take more pride in our live music scene, which is great :).

I think Austin is awesome and there are very smart and creative folks here, but there aren't gigantic conferences every other weekend or a huge concentration of VC's. I do see plenty of folks in coffee shops with TextMate, vi, or Photoshop open. They are usually working on something cool, it's just not hyped up on TechCrunch and such.

[SwellJoe]

I moved from Austin to Silicon Valley. I now know that Austin is not a startup hub (and nowhere else is either). I used to think it was just a matter of degree, but Silicon Valley is really a dramatically different environment for starting a technology company than anywhere else in the world.

I think it's worth noting that even though Boston is considered the "second place" finisher in the startup hub races, not a single Y Combinator company has been funded in Boston, and about 90% of those from the Boston YC programs who keep working on their businesses move to the valley. I don't believe either of these things are accidents of history.

I'll move back to Austin when I "retire", or maybe even sooner, since a large percentage of our customer base is in Texas, but while we're in a position to need to raise money and to stay on top of the technology world, there's just no other place to be.