[bennyg]

I actually hate that quote. What's to stop a poor developer who's not in SV from making an awesome, scalable tech startup?

  Startup founders are, quite simply, people who found startups. They register a business (maybe) and create something that might turn into a business at some point, or even do turn it into a business successfully.

What's stopping me from trying to change the world from Alabama? What's stopping me from making some really cool stuff that I want to see across the whole world, or at least this country, from the deep south? I can spin up a Heroku instance in 5 minutes, and get an app going in under a day. Another day to make a MVP iOS app (then a week to the App Store), and effectively I have infinite reach. There's a very serious, debilitating mindset a lot of people have on this board about necessary VC funding, and a necessary Silicon Valley geographic base. None of those things are true anymore. And likely, weren't necessarily true in the past. It's grotesque that people think funding is what you should strive for. It's horrifying that people are motivated by a TechCrunch article and an exit. Maybe I'm in the minority here, but that's not WHY I'm an entrepreneur. An exit isn't even a motivation of mine. I want a lot of people to use my creations, and to love them. If I can get paid well to achieve that goal - that would be great. If I can get other people paid well for helping me achieve that goal (ie hiring a team), then that's even better.

Sorry for the rant, but I think that quote is entirely off-base and absolutely repulsive.

[swombat]

I think you may want to re-read the article and the quote, and the comment you're responding to, and get a bit of context. You sound like a knee-jerk reaction that's actually agreeing with half the article, but in a really needlessly aggressive way.

Nothing's stopping you. But you'll find certain paths easier than others, depending on what you want. That's what the article is about.

Reading my article, you might notice that I'm arguing, precisely, that you don't need VC funding or SV or any of those things to start a successful business.

That said, if you approach it with the "build it up and worry about the money later" that is often present in typical startups, you will probably (not certainly) fail hard.

As for the comment you're replying to, he's also stating the point that in some parts of the world (most parts), you're better off getting on with starting a business that works anywhere, rather than waiting for the "magical tech cofounder" who's going to start a tech startup with you and take it to infinity and beyond. You might notice he's addressing that specifically to people who can't "spin up a Heroku instance in 5 minutes".