| I've lived in DC, Santa Clara and now Boston. DC/Baltimore has a number of companies that target nongovernment markets which started there i.e. Living Social, Under Armour, Opower (office in SF too I think), etc. The biggest difference in DC and SF is the style of funding. SF VCs have the perception of funding bigger addressable market size companies with excellent engineers and lower probability of success whereas DC VCs and angels tend to focus on companies with traction and maybe a lower possible addressable market and do not seem to be as web engineering focused. The result is lower level of headlines for DC companies in places like hacker news which are focused on the type of company that is born in SF. There are a number of great ways to get funding in DC and for companies which are starting to prove themselves it is a great market to be in. Made In DC (a bunch of startups in DC)
University of Maryland’s "Dingman Angels" (Although it is university affiliated, their focus is on community startups rather than student startups)
The list goes on. Also, the guys from AOL are in a bunch of Angel/VC investments in DC according to CapIQ. |