There's something interesting happening right now. Startups are undergoing the same transformation that technology does when it becomes cheaper.
It's so cheap to start web startups that orders of magnitudes more will be started. And if the pattern holds true, that should cause dramatic changes.
...
Instead of going to venture capitalists with a business plan and trying to convince them to fund it, you can get a product launched on a few tens of thousands of dollars of seed money from us or your uncle, and approach them with a working company instead of a plan for one. Then instead of having to seem smooth and confident, you can just point them to MemeStreams.
This way of convincing investors is better suited to hackers, who often went into technology precisely because they felt uncomfortable with the amount of fakeness required in other fields.
... if you hear someone saying "we don't need to be in Silicon Valley," that use of the word "need" is a sign they're not even thinking about the question right.
If startups are mobile, the best local talent will go to the real Silicon Valley, and all they'll get at the local one will be the people who didn't have the energy to move.
This is not a nationalistic idea, incidentally. It's cities that compete, not countries. Atlanta is just as hosed as Munich.
There's something about big companies that just sucks the energy out of you.
