disclosure: we're a three person startup in Cambridge, and just spent the last week in the valley.
There are both pro/cons of the startup ecosystem in Boston.
-- Its harder to raise funding in Boston compared to SV. In addition, a big part of the funding discussion is timeline to revenues, which is just completely ignored at this stage in the valley.
-- Given this higher bar, the startups that do rise in the Boston ecosystem are of generally higher quality. I was at the launch conference last week, and several companies in the demo pit were honestly just "me-too" class projects. GreenGoose (at Launch) was an example of a Boston startup.
-- Nonethless for consumer web/mobile, Boston startups tend to be inferior to the valley ones. The reasons for this are multifold. (a) The angel/adviser community seems less comfortable funding companies that don't have a clear path to revenues. (b) The entrepreneurs themselves are not the best at designing products / UX etc. (c) The better Boston consumer web/mobile companies move west anyways
-- Given the less "bubble" ness in Boston, hiring top-notch engineers from MIT, Harvard, Olin or other good technical schools is a real option for startups. I'm hearing horror stories on the west coast+ NYC of companies that are funded and can't find the right engineers.
"In addition, a big part of the funding discussion is timeline to revenues, which is just completely ignored at this stage in the valley."
I'd be curious to see a long/medium term study on that - I wonder if the discipline of having thought out a "timeline to revenue" might prove to be a net positive to the odds of success.
While everybody can point at Twitter and Facebook as classic examples of "success" (at least in terms of market valuation) without early (or even current) clear plans of how exactly they're planning to make a profit from what they're doing - a "gut feel" suggests that startups with plans that include something like "we've found demographic X of size Y who're prepared to pay $Z/year for a service solving a problem we'll have in place by Q2 next year" are probably more likely to end up profitable that the team who've worked out a cloud-scalable-agile-web2.0-ruby-on-crack method of stealing all the underwear...
-- The valley has Dropbox (a Boston company with an awesome product that moved west)
-- People here cite Carbonite (which apparently makes a lot of $$ and is heading to IPO, but no tech person seems to use it, and they market to the Glenn Beck audience)
Your point about hiring's a good one, but there's certainly a developer drought here too -- sounds like it's worse over in Cali.
On the flip side I've found bootstrapping to be a viable option in Boston/Cambridge. There's enough demand for developers that it's reasonable to find good contracting gigs (light long-term or heavy short-term). A couple hours a week or a few packed weeks makes it so you can stay afloat without being at the mercy of Boston investors.
Comments
disclosure: we're a three person startup in Cambridge, and just spent the last week in the valley.
There are both pro/cons of the startup ecosystem in Boston.
-- Its harder to raise funding in Boston compared to SV. In addition, a big part of the funding discussion is timeline to revenues, which is just completely ignored at this stage in the valley.
-- Given this higher bar, the startups that do rise in the Boston ecosystem are of generally higher quality. I was at the launch conference last week, and several companies in the demo pit were honestly just "me-too" class projects. GreenGoose (at Launch) was an example of a Boston startup.
-- Nonethless for consumer web/mobile, Boston startups tend to be inferior to the valley ones. The reasons for this are multifold. (a) The angel/adviser community seems less comfortable funding companies that don't have a clear path to revenues. (b) The entrepreneurs themselves are not the best at designing products / UX etc. (c) The better Boston consumer web/mobile companies move west anyways
-- Given the less "bubble" ness in Boston, hiring top-notch engineers from MIT, Harvard, Olin or other good technical schools is a real option for startups. I'm hearing horror stories on the west coast+ NYC of companies that are funded and can't find the right engineers.
"In addition, a big part of the funding discussion is timeline to revenues, which is just completely ignored at this stage in the valley."
I'd be curious to see a long/medium term study on that - I wonder if the discipline of having thought out a "timeline to revenue" might prove to be a net positive to the odds of success.
While everybody can point at Twitter and Facebook as classic examples of "success" (at least in terms of market valuation) without early (or even current) clear plans of how exactly they're planning to make a profit from what they're doing - a "gut feel" suggests that startups with plans that include something like "we've found demographic X of size Y who're prepared to pay $Z/year for a service solving a problem we'll have in place by Q2 next year" are probably more likely to end up profitable that the team who've worked out a cloud-scalable-agile-web2.0-ruby-on-crack method of stealing all the underwear...
Consider an example of the revenue focus:
-- The valley has Dropbox (a Boston company with an awesome product that moved west)
-- People here cite Carbonite (which apparently makes a lot of $$ and is heading to IPO, but no tech person seems to use it, and they market to the Glenn Beck audience)
Your point about hiring's a good one, but there's certainly a developer drought here too -- sounds like it's worse over in Cali.
On the flip side I've found bootstrapping to be a viable option in Boston/Cambridge. There's enough demand for developers that it's reasonable to find good contracting gigs (light long-term or heavy short-term). A couple hours a week or a few packed weeks makes it so you can stay afloat without being at the mercy of Boston investors.