Building a Startup away from the ‘valley’
From moment I started working on building a tech startup, the fact that I live in the washington DC area has nagged me. Is it even possible to build a large startup which may need capital infusion, advisors, good (!!) Lawyers – an entire ecosystem that is needed to build a tech company from scratch, in a place far away from Silicon Valley. Sure, it has been done before – Groupon is in Chicago, Zipcar and LivingSocial are right here in the DC area. But is it more difficult? Building a startup seems hard as it is. Elon Musk compared it to eating glass while staring at the valley of death!! Encouraging…
One hears of, and even when one talks to contacts in the Valley, one hears of the access they have to other entrepreneurs out there – just show up at a local cafe or score an invite to the right Happy Hour and the next thing you know, you are pitching your idea to someone who knows someone who knows Scoble or Theil. And of course, Y-combinator grads are just wandering around the valley waiting to chat up the next buggy-eyed founder. OK, I exaggerate a bit, but you get the point. There is access. Out here, all the people I seem to meet are struggling entrepreneurs like myself or worse, the scourge of the beltway – a consultant! (In full disclosure, I am one in my day job).
Then I read this – a blog post my Caterina Fake, founder of Flickr. As I commented there, it gave me permission to exhale and focus on what matters – building my product and company. This quote from the post says it all:
Anil worries that it’s hard to communicate this motivation to a new generation of entrepreneurs, and I agree. There are so many conferences these days, so many voluble, charismatic leaders, and so much noise. I talk to a lot of entrepreneurs in their 20s who are knowledgeable about the valuations various Y Combinator startups have attained, know the names of all the angel investors in the Valley, have in-depth knowledge of the Facebook diaspora and their doings, have opinions on various Zynga acquisitions, and know exactly how to get Andrew Mason on the line…it boggles the mind. These are good things to have in your tool kit. But I want to hear about things out there that they love. About loving the thing they’re building. There’s less of that. Nevertheless, Anil remains “optimistic that we can make this mindset the default.”
(The Anil in the quote is Anil Dash, another great blogger of the tech world).
Another awesome quote from the same post:
I have a quote behind my desk from Freeman Dyson that I see every day: “There is a great satisfaction in building good tools for other people to use.”
So, I am going to forget where I live, and build something for others to use!
And don’t forget that Flickr was founded in Vancouver, in Canada!
Thank you! I did not know that.
Glad to see you reading my post. It is an honor…