I am always interested in how national publications perceive Seattle’s technology community. After all, as long time journalists covering the daily gyrations of the tech industry here, you sometimes need a good 30,000-foot view of the situation from an outsider.

Today, Bill Rigby at Reuters provides that perspective in a story titled: “In Microsoft’s shadow, Seattle’s tech scene surges.

It’s a good read, and includes insights from Madrona Venture Group’s Matt McIlwain, Ignition’s Frank Artale, Trover CEO Jason Karas and others. We were also especially pleased to see GeekWire’s own chief business officer, Rebecca Lovell, quoted in the story.

Rigby appropriately enough starts the story in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood, a quadrant of the city being transformed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and now dominated by Amazon.com.

But Rigby also details the arrival of Silicon Valley giants such as Salesforce.com, Zynga and Facebook, noting that they are lured here by strong technical talent from the likes of Microsoft, McCaw Cellular and the University of Washington. Those companies and organizations provide a foundation “for technology entrepreneurship that is the envy of would-be Silicon Valleys around the world,” Rigby writes.

The story does note the lack of venture capital and angel financing when compared to other regions, which has been a popular discussion on GeekWire in recent months.

But, as I always like to say when these city-to-city comparisons come up, at least we’re not Cleveland. (I am a loyal Buckeye, so I can say that, right?)

 

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