[socratic]

Is there a particular type of startup that would be appropriate for Boston versus other locations? My instinct is that outside of Biotech and Enterprise software, it is still a huge disadvantage to start a startup in Boston, but I would love to be proven wrong (ideally by some sensible statistics).

Is Boston the kind of place where you can locally raise a seed round with ten or twenty angels for your consumer web startup with great traction but no revenue? Is Boston the kind of place where you can find engineers whose former job was to scale a database or web server or cache to hundreds of millions of active users? Are there deep pocketed companies locally who can afford to and regularly do acquisitions? Are MIT/Harvard (or BC, BU, NE, Tufts, WPI, Olin) grads going to Boston startups, or are they going to banking, Dropbox, or Facebook? Are there enough senior people around?

Vertica, ITA, and Basho are all great companies for example, but are they succeeding because they are in Boston, or in spite of it? How often are these companies flying out to the SF Bay Area to handle core parts of their business (customers, investment, business development)?

[brlewis]

Is Boston the kind of place where you can find engineers whose former job was to scale a database or web server or cache to hundreds of millions of active users?

It must be, otherwise Akamai would not stay in Cambridge.

[LukeRB]

ITA and Kayak were both founded in the Boston area. I've never really figured out why travel sites seem to have such a base in the Boston area. Anybody have ideas? Proximity to Logan for international travel? MIT and Harvard being located there hence lots of travel...?

[LogicX]

Founders of ITA were MIT grads, and hired lots of MIT folks. (Former ITA Software employee here - though not an MIT grad). ITA has been around for over a decade FWIW.

[mosburger]

So was TripAdvisor.

[tjic]

http://transportation.mit.edu/

[jhull]

Expedia is around as well

[martincmartin]

Dropbox and Facebook were started in Boston.

[mhartl]

And now they're both headquartered in the Bay Area. I doubt that's a coincidence.

[roguecoder]

If you are looking for serious computer science expertise, Boston is a great place to be. It's not the place to find cheap web developers, but if your start up needs CS Ph.D.s who can write code you'll be set. Most of the famous Boston start ups were fundamentally algorithm shops.

For what its worth, most of the MIT grads I know have either stayed around Boston or gone into academia. Cambridge, and then later Arlington, are great little towns and vastly different than California.