Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on Seattle 2.0, and imported to GeekWire as part of our acquisition of Seattle 2.0 and its archival content. For more background, see this post.
By Anthony Stevens
How much influence does a vibrant tech community have on a startup’s chances of success? Is the startup journey primarily a solo effort, a heroic journey of self-discovery (or with one or two fellow travelers), or is it partially a social construction, influenced for better or for worse by the people and organizations one interacts with on a day to day basis?
In the Bay Area, you have two competing examples: HP, started in a garage back when there was no such thing as a startup culture, vs. Google, also started in a garage, but this time there was a thriving tech startup scene, and Palo Alto was its fountainhead. I’m convinced that Google couldn’t have had the trajectory it had if it hadn’t been born right in the middle of the most energetic tech area in the world, and at exactly the right time in history.
Place matters. As a Seattleite, I wonder about Seattle’s strengths and weaknesses vis-a-vis startup culture, especially compared to the Bay Area. On the one hand, we’re a much smaller, less diverse group; on the other hand, perhaps that tight-knit culture makes for a more collaborative, more supportive, and less cutthroat environment for fledgling companies. We have a world-class research university at the University of Washington. One of the largest tech companies in the world is headquartered here and employs thousands of smart, capable techies. We have lots of great supporting institutions, such as NWEN, WTIA, Founder’s Co-Op, and the list is growing with the addition of TechStars. We have a thriving after-hours scene, as exemplified by this past week’s Seattle Geek Week events, anchored by Gnomedex.
And yet. And yet we don’t seem to have the huge startup wins, the Googles or Facebooks, the billion-dollar caps. Perhaps that’s intentional. People make a lot of the “lifestyle company” distinction, and how entrepreneurs in Seattle are much more willing (or eager?) to create smaller companies with positive cash flow that allow them lots of spare time to take advantage of all the wonderful things one can do in the Seattle area. Maybe that’s a function of the lack of cutthroat competition I mentioned earlier.
Maybe it’s a function of the fabled Seattle personality, where no one wants to criticize and everyone is a winner just for trying.
Maybe it’s the (relative) lack of diversity. I’ve heard many people sort of half-complain that we see the same people at the same events over and over again. I’m not sure that’s a bad thing – multiple chances to interact with people develops deeper relationships, in my opinion – but it’s something to think about. And besides, diversity is there to find. Just in the last week I’ve heard pitches from four new local startups that are all promising in their own way.
Maybe it’s just pure chance.
What do you think? How important is community? Is a strong community a prerequisite for a startup to break out, or is it merely a nice-to-have?
