DISQUS

Tac Anderson · 1 year ago

Amen, brother. I'm the EIR at Highway 12 Ventures, located in Boise, ID that invests throughout the Rocky Mountain area. I also run the blog TechBoise.com where I talk about tech in the Boise area. I couldn't agree more. I think most decent sized cities want/need a thriving tech community, there are obvious huge economic benefits. But each area needs to find it's focus. I see a lot of AgTech happening in Boise as well as GreenTech, due to the Idaho National Laboratory. Finding your strengths as a community and applying it to tech is critical. What are the universities in your area doing for R&D? What are some of the likely spin-offs or people leaving the already established tech companies in the area? It doesn't all have to be IT and Web. I think the reason most areas don't have a thriving tech community is because no one is leading the effort. It's a multi-front battle to create the right ecosystem which takes a community wide effort. And it takes time and patients (something entrepreneurs aren't historically good at).

Brian Burns · 1 year ago

dude, I love the style here. the blog writing is getting better as the blog design gets better.

jamesoclark · 1 year ago

Couldn't agree more. The comment I often get from other business owners when they relocate here (Boulder) from Silicon Valley is that everyone is willing to help each other. The competition is cleaner and more respectful. The community is interested in overall success and not as individualistic or cut throat. I've been witness to someone who had previous success in growing a company in Silicon Valley come into the this community and fail. Whose to say if was the biz model, the leadership style, the way the company conducted itself in the community. But I can say, that individual did not make many friends. Not to say one community is better than the other, we're all different. But there is something to say about embracing the energy and ethos within each community.

Andrew Hyde · 1 year ago

Makes it easier to write :)

Brian Burns · 1 year ago

nice... presentation matters, apparently both for readers and writers. that'll turn into a blog post or two for me at some point.

Andrew Hyde · 1 year ago

Ok, road trip time to Boise! Your last paragraph is spot on. Spot on.

Andrew Hyde · 1 year ago

Yes Boulder is amazing, and yes there are amazing places all around the world for startups.

Greg Berry · 1 year ago

Hey Andrew, thanks for the post. I've been a bit of a one-man crusade on this issue for over a decade. Put down roots here and passed on many lucrative and ladder-climbing opportunities on both coasts. Now we are rocking away on the Angel Capital Summit, and the Town Hall meeting at the end of the day (still under wraps -- getting 'released' next week) will be a unique chance for the breadth of the Colorado investing and entrepreneurial community to come together and collectively map the future of entrepreneurship, from energy to clean tech to health to web 2.0 to sustainability and more. It's pretty rewarding having focused my energy on this type of convergence to see it coming alive as a fascinating counter-balance to the stock market calamities of past weeks. Hope we'll see you at ACS.

sean · 1 year ago

I find you comments interesting since your firm dumped (and many loyal users would say ruined) the company @Last Software (makers of SketchUp) to Silicon Valley 'borg machine' Google as soon as the price was right. You say "strengths as a community and applying it to tech is critical" but then cash out to Silicon Valley ASAP. Sounds pretty hypocritical to me.