In light of the fact that Y Combinator has abandoned Boston a new essay by Paul Graham is fascinating – Can You Buy a Silicon Valley? Maybe.
“For the price of a football stadium, any town that was decent to live in could make itself one of the biggest startup hubs in the world.
What’s more, it wouldn’t take very long. You could probably do it in five years. During the term of one mayor. And it would get easier over time, because the more startups you had in town, the less it would take to get new ones to move there. By the time you had a thousand startups in town, the VCs wouldn’t be trying so hard to get them to move to Silicon Valley; instead they’d be opening local offices. Then you’d really be in good shape. You’d have started a self-sustaining chain reaction like the one that drives the Valley.”
Meanwhile Max Levchin Is Bored With Silicon Valley Startups and moving to NYC. “Max is unimpressed with the level of innovation in Silicon Valley these days. They’re too constrained by Web 2.0 conventions: status updating, comments, friend lists, fans, gradient icons, and feeds.”
Further Reading: