More on “what’s wrong with Seattle anyway?”…
Not everyone reads comments on a blog but I felt the two comments to my last post “What’s wrong with the Seattle start-up scene anyway?” were insightful and I didn’t want them to get lost in the comment basement. I think the theories here seem as good as any others I’ve heard. For a “business guy” I believe I’m more technical than most at least insofar as I can actually DO some things myself and I don’t rely on devs to handle every tiny request for me. I generally understand what devs are telling me in status meetings and I’m able to have a reasonable two way dialog with them to arrive at decent solutions. So, I love technology. That said, I still need to think about whether or not founders themselves need to be technical. I think we as entrepreneurs need ready access to world class development resources. But, I don’t think the world needs more technical founders. Most projects simply will not require, or benefit from, a CEO who is a developer. Just my two cents. But the comments here are good and the links from Glenn’s response are worth following.
From Glenn Kelman of Redfin:
Kelly, in my opinion, the most important change Seattle could make is to invest more in the University of Washington’s computer science department so that it competes with Champagne-Urbana and Irvine if not Stanford, MIT and Berkeley. Most entrepreneurs here have been imported from elsewhere by Microsoft and Amazon, and many are not technical founders. The entire investment thesis of, say, a Sequoia Capital (fund computer scientists under 35 attacking large markets), is more difficult to implement here as a result.
See:
http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/06/how_to_kick_sil.htmlAnd of course! http://blog.redfin.com/blog/2008/02/the_next_silicon_valley.html
And, thanks to Todd Dean of Keiretsu Forum NW
I have many comments on the topic “what’s wrong with the Seattle start-up scene.” First I would like to address that the Northwest is one of the most active areas if not the most active area in the country for entrepreneurship and companies being funded currently. We (Keiretsu Forum) have a very clear view on what is going on locally, nationally, and internationally regarding start up companies. So let me address a couple of the questions above. 1) Entrepreneurs lack the resources and capital they need. 2) Entrepreneurs have more access to capital and resources due to the climate of the communities in for example Silicon Valley. 3) As for the comparison of Facebook and YouTubes we do have Amazon, Microsoft, Starbucks to name a few. 4) We do have many education resources but in my opinion we still have a ways to go in the area. I’m happy to elaborate further if you should have a meeting, forum, or get together to collaborate and share our points of view??
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