[stevenj]

I may be wrong about this, but I sense that Seattle's startup scene is definitely lacking something important. I can't put my finger on it, but I think it's there.

In my opinion, people here seem pretty risk-averse (ie few want to jump and do a startup, especially people in their twenties).

It kind of seems like people lack the drive to "change the world". Instead, people seem pretty laid back here. It's almost as if they get too comfortable here.

[daveschappell]

No, I don't think that's it (having lived here for 13 years). I think it's just more that people are focused on their own thing, by and large, vs. getting out with a small % of their time and building a community for the greater good.

This 'problem' is so fixable; we just need another catalyst (like what www.GeneralAssemb.ly and New Work City are doing in NYC... and what TechStars did in Boulder, Seattle, Boston and NYC, and many other examples).

We're just a few nudges away, and there's no doubt we'll get there -- we just need to keep focusing on the good stuff, and it's going to happen.

[yakshaving]

That's exactly what we're looking for -- Something like GeneralAssemb.ly in New York.

We're a startup working out of an architecture firm right now. The space is relatively inexpensive, it would be stellar if there were other startups around who are interested in putting together something similar with programming around design and technology.

If you're intersted, reach out to me via twitter (@ashbhoopathy) or email, [e-mail]. I'll also email Seattle Tech Startups about it.

[stevenj]

>I think it's just more that people are focused on their own thing, by and large, vs. getting out with a small % of their time and building a community for the greater good.

Ya, they're not enough "crazy" people.

I think Seattle needs a big consumer-based (2.0 or 3.0) hit. It needs a Facebook, a Groupon, a Twitter, a Skype, a LinkedIn, an Etsy, a Dropbox.

[daveschappell]

you mean, like an Amazon? or a Starbucks? :-)

or, if you want to be cynical that Amazon's a long time ago... how about like an AWS, or a Kindle? The innovation's here -- we just need to get more commingling going on

it's going to happen -- if you're in town, reach out, please -- would love to have you help

[neworbit]

Amazon and Microsoft do not like startups - they prefer to build things internally. And when they do buy startups they tend to kill them. Yes, IMDB is a nice exception, and lately they tend to buy firms and let them run on their own (Zappos) but Amazon got too burned during the dot com runup buying firms that turned out to not be a good match, a la Junglee.

[potatolicious]

Amazon was a long time ago, and AWS/Kindle, while being great products, did not contain really an element of risk the way a scrappy startup does.

I think parent poster has a point - there aren't a lot of recent examples of taking the risk and having it pay off, which may lead to some risk aversion in the community.

[kenjackson]

There are some.

For example Big Fish Games. There's also Tableau Software (although not consumer). Neither large compared to Skype, but both ~$100M revenue companies founded about the time of Skype.

UPDATE: After I wrote this I realized what is different about Seattle than the Bay Area, which is something a previous poster put in parentheticals... (web 2.0/3.0). Look at this list:

Facebook, a Groupon, a Twitter, a Skype, a LinkedIn, an Etsy, a Dropbox

These companies, except maybe Dropbox, are about connecting users together. Not about product. Seattle tends to be more focused on providing product. Is it the case that you are less likely to see a Tableau or Mathematica come out of the Bay Area?

[tesseract]

For what it's worth, Lab126 (the Kindle-designing branch of Amazon) is in Cupertino, not Seattle.

[adpowers]

But many of the backend services powering Kindle are based in Seattle.

[kenjackson]

And there's the fastest selling consumer electronics product in history... the Kinect.

[tomfakes]

I wonder if the problem is that the music scene is so good here in Seattle that the recently graduated want to participate in that area, both as producers and consumers, and not so much in the tech area?

[mechazoidal]

Possibly the Seattle Freeze? http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/pacificnw/2005/0213/cover.h...

In the 5 years after college that I lived in the city proper, the only tech group I managed to hang around was Seattle.RB, and only a few meeting at that.

[gerner]

There is a ton of casual tech stuff going on in Seattle. check out http://www.seattletechcalendar.com, or (disclosure: my blog) http://fourthirtysix.com/tech-sci/

We're not lacking the meetups, the events (Seattle 2.0 awards tonight!) We're lacking the leadership and super-stars participation in the community. While I see Dave Schappell at Hops and Chops, I don't feel like others mingling with us casual masses without it being self promotional.

I want to go to some event (and Hops and Chops seems like a good venue), have a real conversation with the CTO of a startup about solving some tech or product challenge. Or I want to hear about how some CEO got started over a beer. And I want to meet another super-star who's actively looking for help.

[vertr]

I agree. The Seattle startup culture reflects the city's passive agressive and cold nature. CEO's and other execs stick to their small circles.

[gills]

In my 31 years of Seattle I guess I've found that friendships here are made and kept by doing active stuff together. Like camping, or boating, or cycling. There's not a lot of interest in "hey, want to loaf around together for a couple hours?" A lot of folks I know seem to tolerate the Seattle weather only because the summers and activities are great; killing time as bumps on a log is kind of silly.

Or maybe I'm just a poster-child for Pemco ads. I am wearing sandals and gore-tex and typing this from a Starbucks...

[mechazoidal]

But do you invite other people, or have some way of introducing others to it? That's kind of what I'm getting at: regardless of the activity, there's a social disconnect for getting people involved if they're not already in a circle of friends--and the few circles I was in didn't intersect at all.

It's not necessarily an insurmountable gap but it's enough to intimidate most people who aren't already outgoing, or who are accustomed to a friendlier town.

I grew up in Redmond, went to college at WSU, and moved into Seattle in 2002. For the longest time after that, when walking into a bar or show, I had to keep persuading myself that people were not going to point and scream at me like Donald Sutherland in the 70's Body Snatchers movie.

[gills]

Indeed. Most of my friends I have met through work or church or other friends; some sort of pre-existing common cause. Cultivating friendships "from scratch", so to speak, is admittedly much more difficult.

On topic, that feature of Seattle may have some bearing on entrepreneurs in search of capital or employees or a support network. But it seems orthogonal to actually taking the plunge; you're either going to do it, or keep talking about it.

(Also, I think we may have been in some classes together at WSU! We must know some of the same people, you're 3 degrees away on LinkedIn.)

[mechazoidal]

I definitely agree that entrepreneurs are going to take the plunge or not. I'm focused on the support network / employee angle, and harkening back to daveschappell's point that the circles don't really connect. There are communities, yes, but no sense of overall community that you can get a starting point in. It seemed like tribes all the way down: ex-[Amazon | MS | Google], UW clubs, etc. And if you didn't know where to begin, there wasn't an easy way to find someone to ask.

Case in point: if I'd known there were more startups looking for talent, I probably wouldn't have moved out to the eastern part of the state in 2007. At the time, my options after burnout+dismissal seemed to be 'work for another large company'(which I'm still wary of), 'pursue your own idea on your lonesome'(which I didn't have any of at the time) or 'don't work at all'.

(My best classes at WSU were with Hagemeister, Wang(CS460 FTW), and Biker Bob. Contributing to my slight-insecurity as a dev, I was also part of the Benson class that petitioned to have him removed: for tossing us a description of car/cdr and expecting us to build a complete Lisp in SML)

[rubyrescue]

actually... as a perfect example ... seattle.rb is one of the most unfriendly tech groups i've ever visited - and I know a number of others who would say the same thing.