Poll: What other US cities for a YC like program?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=692672

by jasonlbaptiste • 17 years ago

35 56 17 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Oompa• 17 years ago

Atlanta

psadauskas• 17 years ago

Denver/Boulder

mtrichardson• 17 years ago

Portland, OR.

profquail• 17 years ago

Raleigh, NC

f002• 17 years ago

Austin, TX.

A YC-ish group called 'Capital Factory' recently began operating here, but if you look at the inaugural group of funded ventures, they're either:

  a) Not attracting Silicon Valley caliber talent/ideas/entrepreneurs

  b) Not looking for the same type of startups as YC.

I'm not sure which, but I sadly suspect the former.

Also, given that YC appears to be going Valley-only, perhaps the 'Another Boston option' should just be Boston, MA, right?

jasonlbaptiste5• 17 years ago

interesting re: cap factory.

techstars is in boston now too.

gojomo• 17 years ago

Has the poll locked or hit a maximum? Lots of good suggestions in comments aren't yet poll options.

larrykubin• 17 years ago

Austin is great. We have a large university, many freelance web developers/designers, and lots of wi-fi. A small amount of money goes a long way here, which is a big plus.

arohner• 17 years ago

Given that I applied to cap factory and got denied, I suspect the latter. :-)

From what I saw, they appear to be looking for more polished startups, and their application process does not have the same focus on finding talented hackers that YC's appears to have.

f002• 17 years ago

You're probably right. I was feeling negative, because I had hoped that Capital Factory would provide seed funding for innovative development and help kindle some entrepreneurship among top-notch hacker types in Austin.

I'm not really sure what motivated them to pick a hodgepodge of me-too web properties (a few niche craigslist-ish things and a pet medical site).

Outside of Capital Factory, it seems like Austin Ventures and friends will continue to fund more of the same recycled enterprise network/virtualization/identity management software companies, being started by the same management teams over and over.

I really hope the next batch of CF startups is more interesting/innovative. Good luck with your venture, it looks promising, even if CF didn't care to fund it.

krauses• 17 years ago

Columbus, Ohio.

keefe• 17 years ago

I hail from Cincinnati originally, details please???

sarvesh2• 17 years ago

San Diego

LukeG• 17 years ago

Great research university (UCSD), decent support schools (USD + SDSU), massive biotech/medtech startup scene, some strong big tech & gaming companies (e.g Qualcomm, Sony Online Entertainment), growing startup/web scene (Mindtouch and more), great weather, easy, relaxed lifestyle, relatively cheap housing...

maxent• 17 years ago

Join us at the San Diego Tech Founders meeting July 16th. I'm organizing a group of San Diego Tech Founders with the purpose of meeting monthly to discuss customer and product development and business strategy. I would also like the group to develop into a great place to meet potential co-founders.

http://sd.techfounders.org/

http://twitter.com/sdtechfounders

If you are a founder of a technology company, or have the desire to start/co-found a technology company, please join us for presentations and networking at our first meeting on Thursday, July 16th at the Hive Haus co-working space in downtown San Diego.

Details and RSVP at http://bit.ly/15qTnn

Mike

sarvesh2• 17 years ago

Nice, I'll be there.

wheels4• 17 years ago

There are, for the record, YC-like programs in Chicago, Atlanta, Boston, Boulder, Austin and Washington D.C. and something similar in NYC -- if not more.

jasonlbaptiste5• 17 years ago

what is there in NYC? Hatchery is more like an incubator?

wheels4• 17 years ago

http://www.startatspark.com/ was what I had in mind.

tsondermann• 17 years ago

I'm helping Betaspring in Providence RI get off the ground. http://betaspring.com. There's also Bootup Labs in Vancouver, Junto Partners in Salt Lake City, Good Company Ventures (for social enterprise) and DreamIt in Philly , Next Start in Greenville, Alphalab in Pittsburgh.

maukdaddy• 17 years ago

What is the name of the YC-like program in Chicago?

wheels4• 17 years ago

Ah, I thought DreamIt was in Chicago; seems to be in Philly.

bmelton3• 17 years ago

I at least googled before asking, but what's the DC equivalent?

wheels4• 17 years ago

http://www.launchboxdigital.com/

rms2• 17 years ago

Pittsburgh

steveklabnik2• 17 years ago

I'm posting this from AlphaLab right now.

http://alphalab.org/default.aspx

brianlash• 17 years ago

Love finding other Pittsburgh YC'ers. Drop me an email sometime - I'd love to get together and shoot the bull.

khangtoh• 17 years ago

What's up Steve!

vyrotek• 17 years ago

Salt Lake City, UT

mkull2• 17 years ago

Philadelphia, DreamIT is based here and has gotten a lot of local support

jasonlbaptiste5• 17 years ago

I was going to add that, but I feel DreamIT has philly covered well enough.

dcassel• 17 years ago

Philly's got lots of colleges & universities, though not as well known as Boston's. One of PG's criteria!

mkull2• 17 years ago

Wharton is pretty well known

shedd• 17 years ago

The way the Philadelphia startup community has rallied around Indy Hall, Philadelphia Startup Leaders, and DreamIt is extremely impressive and the nucleus of something bigger.

beaker• 17 years ago

San Diego

timwiseman4• 17 years ago

I voted for Las Vegas, and I'll admit I'm biased since I live there, but let me elaborate as to why I think it could be a hotbed.

Many people know Las Vegas as only a resort community, which was and remains its focus, but recently it has a growing entrepreneurial base. Small companies such as Heatlh Data Insights have been started here and grew exceedingly quickly. Moreover even its nature as a resort town is helpful to certain types of startups since numerous conventions are held here and thus facilitate networking with people in various fields with minimal travel.

It currently has both a major university (UNLV) and a smaller community college (CSN). While neither are exceptionally highly ranked that is largely because they are young as institutions and UNLV was improving with impressive speed prior to the economic downturn. Boyd School of Law within UNLV continues to climb the charts in spite of the downturn. So there is a strong and growing academic base here.

While the cost of living here is unfortunately high, it is less so than Silicon Valley so that is clearly no major barrier.

In all, I think Las Vegas would be a rich vein for startups in the future.

anamax3• 17 years ago

> Boyd School of Law within UNLV continues to climb the charts in spite of the downturn.

And the relevance of this to startups is? (One possible answer is "they do startup law", but only if they actually do.)

> While the cost of living here is unfortunately high, it is less so than Silicon Valley so that is clearly no major barrier.

"barrier" has something to do with the relationship between cost and benefit. If the cost is 10% less but the benefit is 50% less....

timwiseman4• 17 years ago

>And the relevance of this to startups is? It depends on how you define startup. If you are referring specifically to high tech startups, then the relevance is fairly small. If you use the term more generally for recently formed, small companies then many fields require immediate access to lawyers. And for many of those, the more and cheaper the lawyers they can get, the better. HDI, a company I would cite as a recent success story here, requires frequent access to lawyers as part of its business model.

>"barrier" has something to do with the relationship between cost and benefit. If the cost is 10% less but the benefit is 50% less.."

You are completely right. Perhaps I should have more cautiously said "While the cost of living here is unfortunately high, it is less so than Silicon Valley so that is clearly not necessarily a major barrier in itself."

imp• 17 years ago

Cleveland, OH

drinian• 17 years ago

Baltimore. Relatively low rents for the East Coast, culturally unique, and has low-cost access to DC, Philadelphia, and New York. Not to mention there's huge numbers of technical people around here because of the federal government.

bmelton3• 17 years ago

I hope this isn't taken as snarky as it sounds when I say it out loud, but in my experience, the average federal employee is the last person I'd expect to be entrepreneurial in the least.

And do note that I say that as a federal contractor.

enomar• 17 years ago

Irvine, CA (Orange County)

ABrandt• 17 years ago

Saint Louis or Chicago anyone? I really don't know of any real tech communities throughout the Midwest but there certainly is a lot of talent here.

oakmac• 17 years ago

Houston

dasi485• 17 years ago

Detroit,Michigan - motion picture production startups

The State Of Michigan is offering a new 40% cash rebate of motion picture production which makes it the most aggressive program in the country. Its is trying to send a message to hedge funds, private equity groups, money managers, family offices, tax attorneys, high net worth investors, tax credit buyers, New Markets Tax Credit investors, and other international investors on the risk minimization of entertainment finance by getting a 40% cash back on the cost of equity.

More info: http://www.goarticles.com/cgi-bin/showa.cgi?C=1170341 http://www.michigan.gov/

medianama• 17 years ago

New Delhi, India

abyssknight• 17 years ago

+1 for Orlando. We have a great community down here, and cost of living is far less than the bay area (and taxes are low too!). You could probably bootstrap a lot easier here, and if everything goes horribly wrong there's a decent job market to fall back on.

Poll: What other US cities for a YC like program?

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