| The advantage of the existing hubs is the difference between a continuous vs. discrete labor market. If you want a Scala + NoSQL + NLP full-stack expert with 10 years production experience with the JVM and 2 years as a product manager, and you want such a person to start in 3 weeks, you can find that in California-- for some price. In Madison, there are still a lot of great people, but not the massive number of technical people that makes it likely that you'll find an ideal match. If you can't afford any hiring latency and have strict requirements, you need to be in a hub. All that said, I think these grow-fast-or-die efforts are pretty stupid. If something adds genuine value and isn't just trying to first-post some obvious idea, does it really need to grow at 20% per month? Also, a lot of these work that startups are doing isn't that complicated and doesn't require the level of people they think they need. I hate that social-climbing useless selectivity of needing awesome people to do mediocre work, largely because these startups lie about their intentions and I'm one of those "awesome" (?) people they're looking to court (and then underemploy on their mediocre idea). The continuous-market effect goes both ways: if your startup goes belly-up in California, you'll have 4 interviews in a week. If you hauled ass out to the Midwest and that happens, you'll probably have to move again for your next opportunity. Also, some cynical realism: it's harder to start a bidding war (which is how most people get their best jobs) in Minnesota. The rest of the country has quality people and companies, but not the critical mass of them that creates a continuous market. Investors generally aren't comfortable launching a business in a place with a discrete labor market. I'd love to see a better distribution of opportunity. It'll (a) generate more eligible places to live, and (b) lower the rents for those of us who stay. However, I think that's a really hard problem to solve, because technology has become so specialized that very few regions are big enough to support a continuous labor market. Honestly, I'm a major fan of the Midwest: a lot of really great people are out there, and they have no idea what they're worth and what they could do in technology. That said, I tend to think the advantage of the hubs is vast. I'd probably move to California myself (as opposed to #2 New York) if it weren't for strong family reasons to stay here. |
I thought that, for tech startups, it was, #1. Silicon Valley, #2 Tel Aviv, #3 Boston/Route 128, and then came some sorting of New York, London, Singapore, that triangle in Virginia, whatever city is in the lead in India, etc.