[thesingularity]

This is a hard question to answer without knowing what kind of startup you are planning on starting. If you can share more details on that, you would get better advice that the generic one I am about to give here.

I believe one of the biggest disadvantages that you are not seeing with respect to the location is the distance from the market. Startups are more successful in the Valley compared to anywhere else, because the early adopters are in the valley too. These early adopters/customers allow a startup to know what to build, know when to pivot and know when to scale. Facebook was created in Harvard. Sure, it could have been created anywhere in the world, but looking back, being in one of the most prestigious schools in the world made a huge difference in its success.

So, unless you are building something for a set of people that you will find locally, you should look at moving closer to where other startups in your domain have been successful.

[pcmonk]

Well, the project I'm working on right now is a graphical programming project, but I'm not sure that it will end up as a startup (I plan to open source in a month or two). I really don't know what kind of startup I would do, but I'm pretty sure that it would be centered around some piece of software, and not likely a mobile app, but rather either desktop software (most likely) or a web service.

Okay, so I would be physically distant from the early adopters. Would this be a similar problem for me if I were to stay where I am (Phoenix)? We have a small startup community, but nothing like the Valley.

At any rate, I'll probably finish my degree before I do a startup.

[soneca]

Exactly, "get out of the building" would be "get out of the country", making much harder to follow the advice.