Why Startup Hubs Work
October 2011If you look at a list of US cities sorted by population, the number of successful startups per capita varies by orders of magnitude. Somehow it's as if most places were sprayed with startupicide.I wondered about this for years. I could see the average town was like a roach motel for startup ambitions: smart, ambitious people went in, but no startups came out.
- ▪October 2011If you look at a list of US cities sorted by population, the number of successful startups per capita varies by orders of magnitude.
- ▪Somehow it's as if most places were sprayed with startupicide.I wondered about this for years.
- ▪I could see the average town was like a roach motel for startup ambitions: smart, ambitious people went in, but no startups came out.
Paul Graham — Essays files mainly under blogs. We currently carry 219 of its stories.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Want to start a startup? Get funded by Y Combinator. October 2011If you look at a list of US cities sorted by population, the number of successful startups per capita varies by orders of magnitude. Somehow it's as if most places were sprayed with startupicide.I wondered about this for years. I could see the average town was like a roach motel for startup ambitions: smart, ambitious people went in, but no startups came out. But I was never able to figure out exactly what happened inside the motel—exactly what was killing all the potential startups. [1]A couple weeks ago I finally figured it out. I was framing the question wrong. The problem is not that most towns kill startups. It's that death is the default for startups, and most towns don't save them.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Paul Graham — Essays.