Paul Graham comes back to clarify about why startups should move to Silicon Valley but I’m not convinced now as I wasn’t convinced then.
His reasoning is entirely about funding. If you need seed funding so you can dick off work for six months and build the next FaceBayLinkSpace, then you’re more likely to get it in Silicon Valley than Belfast. To be honest, Belfast (and by extension, most of the UK) is about forty years behind Silicon Valley in terms of Venture Capital and Business Angels. Not that you need to move to Silicon Valley to chew through VC money with PR stunts and as Paul says – if you’ve got a commitment for funding and you can stay where you are, take it!
But if you’re happy to grow organically rather than worry about hiring 80 people in the next six months and you intend to bootstrap your way to success, then you can do that anywhere, especially in the software business. Even when you have a physical product, your out-of-the-way location can provide you with some cachet. Anyone want to buy some real Irish dirt? I have scads of it in my back yard. You want it mixed with shamrock seeds? No problem. Just put it in a pot, add water and boom, you’ve got your own little tiny fraction of Ireland. I accept Paypal and credit cards. Oh, and cash.
But yes, the posterboy for moving to Silicon Valley is Facebook. Rather than 10 billion dollars, there’s some daft speculation that it might be worth 100 billion dollars and Zuckerberg is unlikely to play that down. And yes, Boston VCs turned them down while Silicon Valley VCs took the chance. Hard to break it to you, but there’s about a hundred social networking sites and VCs funded a lot of them. Their decisions are half-chance, just like everyone else. Is Facebook bigger than everyone else because they moved to Silicon Valley? I doubt it. Really, I doubt it.
So don’t book your tickets for Silicon Valley. There’s a mass hysteria about it being the only place for success. It’s a load of self-fulfilling bollocks. Success will be because you’ve worked hard, you’ve got a good idea and you execute it well.