[pg]

Shouldn't, or doesn't? Because in many if not most fields, great work has not been randomly distributed. There are almost always geographic clusters. If you want to do great work, it really helps to be around other people working on similar things. The hard part is not infrastructure but community. (Which is why we've always paid a lot of attention to community at YC.)

[joshbert]

Paul, even though you're more experienced than most of us when it comes to building and maintaining entrepreneurial ecosystems, I do feel that the community part of this equation can be accomplished regardless of geographic issues.

For me, the great thing about the web is that it is geographically agnostic. This allows for building great businesses and communities without the need of geographical proximity. Meeting other like-minded individuals physically is great, sure, but the inability to do so shouldn't be an obstacle that hinders working with them and accomplishing great things together imho.

[Mz]

For me, the great thing about the web is that it is geographically agnostic.

I haven't found that to be entirely true for me as an individual. The closest online friendships I have had typically involved a lot of live chat of some sort -- exchanges basically in real time when we are both online at the same time (whether via a chat system or ongoing email exchange or some such). When I moved from West Coast to East Coast, this damaged some relationships. Moving from night-shift to day-shift had a similar impact. I'm prone to insomnia and have had quite a few relationships with people in distant lands who happened to be online at the same time I was when I was up during night. When I start sleeping better again, it can be hard on the relationship. So while where I live is not the only thing which impacts this, it does have an impact.

I don't think it's just me. I've known a couple of Americans who worked with people in India who either kept odd hours to facilitate that (an entrepreneur/consultant) or routinely had their regular sleep schedule interrupted by middle-of-the-night calls (supervisor at a big company with a team in India).

[armandososa]

Is it time for virtual clustering instead of geographic? I feel like software like YC's own Convore allows for the gathering of communities regardless of their member's physical location.

Is that virtual proximity enough to build great communities? There's only one way to know, isn't it?

[dweekly]

You've done a stellar job building community at YC. The thing that led me to create Mexican.VC was noting that the hacker community was really taking off there - Mexico City alone has thrown some 20 DevHouses, and over a dozen locations across the country have done them. (Including Guadalajara, Merida, Obregon, Hermosillo, Morelos, etc.) So the community was really the draw for us from square one.