Seattle vs. Silicon Valley; Kelman vs. Arrington. Hey Blodget! What about Silicon Alley?
I had a love - hate relationship with Seattle. Loved the friends I made, people I worked with, ease of life. Hated the weather, the Seattle style of living (hiking over martinis) and the general Seattle work attitude (despite the beast in redmond, most of the seattle startup scene is the anti-east coast, i.e. non-confrontational)
My take on Seattle is that people who live there for extended periods of time love it -- because you have to in order to put up with it. Sure, for 3 months of the year Seattle is the most beautiful place on earth, but for the other 9 months it can be the gloomiest. You have to want it bad to do it again and again and again (unless you are just a sucker for gloomy).
What you don't see in Seattle is the all nighters that typify the younger Silicon Valley scene. What you do see is a very family friendly, community oriented, close knit startup culture. Seattle is less about the hottest company of the moment and more about the best places to work at. I agree with Glenn's note below that Seattle is NOT Silicon Valley North, rather it is a unique place unto itself.
[I'll note that in 2003/2004 I purposely decided to start Jobster in Seattle not in Silicon Valley because I felt that Seattle would be a better place to build a B2B business and a better place to retain talent for longer periods of time vs. Silicon Valley which seemed to be willing itself out of the dot-bomb crash of earlier in the decade]
Glenn Kelman from Redfin wrote a blog post the other day in which he defends Seattle as a great place to start a company, and extols the virtues of Seattle as a potentially better place to build a grown up long term business vs. Silicon Valley as a place where kids play.
Some choice quotes from Glen's post:
The New York Times reports Friday that alone among all the cities hoping to be the next Silicon Valley, Seattle "is actually doing it."
But the Times didn't talk to iLike President Hadi Partovi, or Zillow.com CEO Rich Barton, both entrepreneurs who, like many of the folks at Redfin, shuttle between Seattle and Silicon Valley. None of us thinks Seattle is ever going to be much like Silicon Valley. We believe instead that what other cities can learn from Seattle is how to be different than the Valley, not the same.
- In reality, most places don't even want to try to be like the Valley. Seattle has become unrecognizably wealthier in the past decade, yet is oddly unhappy about it. Many Seattleites wish we were still a modest boreal town rather than a Microsoft-Amazon megapolis. The question I am most often asked here is where I went to high school -- twenty years ago -- not what I'm doing next.
- Seattle is different. People live in Seattle because they love Seattle. When I was still looking for a reason to be here myself, I often asked Redfin recruits what brought them to town. The answer I always hoped for was "CONQUEST." But what everyone talked about was something I still barely understand: the lifestyle and schools, the mountains and lakes. "Do you have any idea," I finally told one candidate, "how bizarre it is to swim in a lake at the center of a city?"
Failure to appreciate a lake is viewed by many Seattleites as a sign of mental illness. But the Valley's monomania is really just a kind of pubescence. What else could account for the Valley's self-righteousness, its congregations of frustrated dudes, its all-nighters, idealism, delusions of grandeur, mood-swings, longings, dramas, hero-worship and pranks? Anywhere else by contrast seems all grown-up.
No one in the Valley can afford to grow up. Just as stressful environments delay the onset of sexual maturity in marsupials, a high cost of living - a two-bedroom house in Palo Alto typically costs more than $1.5 million -- prevents people from buying homes and having children. In Silicon Valley, Seattle's 28 year-old family man is still working his tail off for a hit.
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This is not to say that Seattle is all bad for entrepreneurs, only that
the ways in which it is good only show how different it is compared to
Silicon Valley. Start with Seattle's Rotary Club, the largest in the
world. High-tech entrepreneurs are expected to be pillars of the
business community here, not, as Silicon Valley's establishment likes
to think of itself, pirates of the Caribbean.
At one of the first conferences I attended in Seattle, I was shocked to hear a speaker talk about how to improve K-12 math education, not how to hack a Tivo. It took a while to realize that "K" stood for kindergarten, not kilobytes. But this mindset connects us to a set of civic virtues bigger than any one company. It's why I'm optimistic about Seattle over the long haul.
- This is why Hadi says so many Seattle entrepreneurs develop ideas late. We aren't slow; just out of the loop. Even Seattle's greatest two start-ups, Amazon and Microsoft, were first conceived somewhere else.
- Because if it turns out that Zillow, iLike or Redfin are on to something good, it may be easier to build a long-term business in Seattle. Ten years on at Microsoft, engineers deep in Redmond's rain forests are still writing the next version of Office. Meanwhile the engineers at Google are, as Zillow's Rich Barton points out, plotting their next startup on the company dime.
- I'm not sure which engineers one would rather have, but it is true that there is a blue-collar dedication in Seattle that you don't find in the ADD-addled Valley. "You work hard here because it's gray," Rich writes. "Then you go hiking or fishing or skiing."
- I really like that advice. Unfazed by any heavy weather ahead, Rich keeps chugging along and having fun. And Seattle does, too.
- Redfin
CEO Glenn Kelman wrote a blog post a couple of days ago comparing Silicon Valley unfavorably to the Seattle tech scene. - I spend a lot of time in both places, and I think some of his observations are correct (people here compete to the death, people there go hiking). But even though I occasionally criticize Silicon Valley myself, I think there are some things that are dead wrong in his analysis. If you want a well balanced life, Silicon Valley is not for you. But if you want to change the world and are willing to do absolutely anything to achieve your dreams, there is no better place to be than here.
- Apart from a few arguable points, such as his opinion that it is easier to retain employees in Seattle because they aren't always looking to start their own company, most of the post seems come down to Kelman convincing himself that Seattle's shortcomings are well worth it because it's a nice place to live. Sure, he admits, not being immersed in tech means you tend to be out of it a little, and it's harder to come up with cutting edge ideas: "When you and everyone you know spend 18 hours a day downloading, hacking, breaking, sharing, gossiping, criticizing and arguing about the Web, it's easier to tell when an idea is truly new. And if you don't, it's almost impossible to catch up."
- He explains all that away, though, by suggesting startups in Seattle are more about building a great business than simply being cutting edge, or "cool". "But being apart from Silicon Valley can give entrepreneurs the latitude to think about what works, not what's fashionable," he says.
- The problem, though, is Kelman doesn't provide any supporting evidence for this thesis, and I can't think of any for him. The truth is people come up with good ideas when they have the motivation and intelligence to do so, not when they're surrounded by people who don't know what they're talking about. Having literally tens of thousands of bright tech minds around you to listen to and challenge those ideas, as you do in Silicon Valley, gives entrepreneurs a critical competitive advantage.
- The truth about Silicon Valley is that ideas matter more than
anything. A Stanford (or even the occasional Berkeley) student with an
idea can turn it into a Yahoo. Or a Google. Or countless other success
stories. They are surrounded by people who want them to succeed, who
are willing to give them money to support their ideas, and then help
them grow it. There is no where else in the world quite like this place.
Sure Seattle is beautiful (Kelman talks about lakes and outdoor stuff a lot in his post). And if you want to have a balanced, healthy lifestyle, that's a great place to do it. If you don't think you have what it takes to make it in Silicon Valley, maybe Seattle or other mini-tech hubs is the place for you. But the best of the best come to Silicon Valley to see if they're as good as the legends that came before them. It's a competitive advantage to be here. And if you aren't willing to take advantage of every possible advantage to make your crazy startup idea work, perhaps you shouldn't be an entrepreneur.
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Sure, Silicon Valley is "a heartless amnesiac." There is no nostalgia for the old days, because we are always looking to rip the old stuff up and throw it away for something better
The fact is that all those great things about Seattle, or wherever, don't have a damned thing to do with offsetting the business and cultural advantages of Silicon Valley. Making lifestyle choices is fine, but don't delude yourself into thinking those choices are anything but a tradeoff. If staring at lakes and skiing after work are important to you, don't pretend to be surprised when your startup doesn't cut it.
You spent 16 years in Silicon Valley before fleeing to Seattle, Glenn. Come back, if you dare. I think you have what it takes to succeed. Even here.
But wait a minute Kellman and Arrington -- Seattle and Silicon Valley aren't the only places to build a startup. New York -- Silicon Alley as some like to call it -- is rapidly becoming THE place to build a digital media company. Over the next few weeks I'll try to capture some thoughts from Silicon Alley entrepreneurs on why they are in a NY Startup State of Mind.
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