I talk to a lot of people thinking about the Bay Area like is the place to be. There are a lot of hot web properties taking off out there right now, but most of the people who are talking about the bay area are bragging about job offers that they have from companies like Yahoo! If they started interviewing with them BEFORE the IPO then I’d be impressed, but today that isn’t any more impressive than getting an offer from Microsoft. While I would love to dissuade them, I’m not so sure that those are the people who are going to contribute to the community. After all, getting a job with a big (established) company isn’t the point of being in the startup friendly Bay Area is it? The point is to be in a place where there is a thriving entrepreneurial culture…a place where your contributions might disrupt the market like Facebook and Google have. And if you choose well and get a little lucky you might even make a few bucks if the company that you are sweating for IPO’s or gets acquired. I’m pretty sure that the people who are want to work for Yahoo! and Microsoft are not concerned about the future value of their stock options or whether or not those companies make it.
Money isn’t everything, and even the bay area folks know this. The people behind the big name startups of yesterday are founding companies that are doing philanthropic, green and cool new things like space exploration.
The only thing is that these guys have to head East to get connected with the people in philanthropy, environmentalism, politics, space, etc. Facebook visited DC and would have skipped the DC tech community had it not been for a well organized community and a mob of networked bloggers. The reality is that these days the people here on the East coast have ambitions and ideas of their own, so they don’t need to head West. A recent event called Social Matchbox (www.socialmatchbox.com) hosted here in Washington, DC brought together more than 30 startup companies in one night that represented extremely well. With crowds like this coming together it will not be long before the money makes it way to the East too.
