Are you sure you want to listen to someone who has never lived in San Francisco?
How can you measure the benefits of being around people and businesses that are similar? Its possible to trade stocks anywhere, but why do companies setup in New York or London?
If you don't want to take someone else's money to build your business, then don't. If you lived in Las Vegas would you automatically become a gambler?
> Are you sure you want to listen to someone who has never lived in San Francisco?
Perhaps. But on the other hand - what value is the opinion of someone who has only ever worked/started-up in SF?
To have a basis for comparison you'd need to have experience both in and outside of the Bay area. Probably multiple places outside of the Bay would be needed for a reasonable basis for generalising.
I think that -- by pointing out that there has been only one successful startup in Chicago (37Signals does not count; it's not really a startup, just a small business) -- that you just underscored the argument for the Bay Area.
First, I'm citing Feedburner to demonstrate that large Google acquisitions don't have to come from the Bay Area. Are you refuting that?
Second, if you ask me to name more Chicago startups, I'll add 37Signals, EveryBlock, Threadless, Inkling Markets, and of course Orbitz.
Third, nobody is arguing that any other city in the US, including Boston, can go toe to toe with San Francisco simply on body count. I am, however, objecting to the argument that in 2008, the only way to be successful in a web company is to be based in the same city as your potential acquirer. I'll guarantee you this: your customers will not give a shit where you're located.
just to nitpick, Orbitz totally wasn't a "startup" in the conventional sense, and certainly not the DHH sense. It was a project conceived and funded by a cartel of major airlines. The initial funding was 150 million dollars!
You could argue both ways about 37signals, since if you consider Rails as one of their products, they are becoming pretty big through that. Considering the arguments made in Be Good, one can take the point of view of a startup being a startup not because it's chasing huge amounts of money or huge corporate growth, but because it's trying to make a difference in the world. 37signals certainly does that, firstly through Rails and also by providing an interesting reference point for how to design software and run a software company.
How can you measure the benefits of being around people and businesses that are similar? Its possible to trade stocks anywhere, but why do companies setup in New York or London?
If you don't want to take someone else's money to build your business, then don't. If you lived in Las Vegas would you automatically become a gambler?