I like SV. Most people outside of it, albeit smart and intelligent, "don't get Internet" and it's quite apparent. While there are always exceptions to any rule, it's still a rule nevertheless, therefore the original guy's comment "... even for the east coast" IMO is still valid.

We're in Austin, TX - commonly accepted as 4th largest startup hub behind Valley, Boston and Seattle. And people here don't get Internet - everybody's busy inventing new ways of being acquired by IBM via producing yet another boring (but always revolutionary) B2B crap on J2EE.

Don't take it to personal...I'm not even near the valley, but: * Politicians say this about Washington * Movie Stars about LA * Bankers about NY

You can be anything you want and excel at it anywhere in the world, but its the BIG LEAGUE perception in each respective profession of being in that city/region, take it as a complement not an insult ;)

I totally agree.

And furthermore I think that it is not always good for entrepreneurs to be in Silicon Valley. I have noticed that a lot of valley people are extremely focused on whatever the fad of the day is. If your website doesn't have tags and RSS feeds, and is done in Ruby on Rails you are just sooo yesterday.

But guess what? Nobody cares. Most people that use the web (AKA customers) don't even know what any of these things are. They just want something that works.

And they don't care whether it is built with Ruby or assembler, or whether it has Megoo-ultraflash mashup components.

People from the valley often miss this.

Anyone who gets caught up in that mentality should go read Joel On Software. He gets some derision in technical circles because he uses [holding nose] Microsoft products, but he makes technical decisions based on how it will affect his business. And he has a successful business. Go figure!

And he's not in Silicon Valley.

I'm actually reading his book right now....

Yes he definitely gets it.

The sort of disadvantages you list can be avoided by self-discipline. The disadvantages of being in other places mostly can't be. Since successful founders have lots of self-discipline, it's a net win for them to be in the Valley.

Good point - and I have thought about moving...

But there are three profound advantages to Denmark (which is where I am based)

1) Danes are smart... I went to the valley on an exploratory tour a few years ago to gauge the standard, and I was really disappointed. I might of course not have met the right people, and my sample could have been bigger. But seeing what comes out of the valley everyday I think that it is not totally off. I think that it is no coincidence that the hackers behind turbopascal, Delphi, c#, PHP, c++ and Ruby on Rails are all from Denmark. A friend of mine even got disqualified from a hacking contest (hack together a functioning system in one hour) because they thought he must have gotten outside help...

2) Because of the restraints we face (the whole ecosystem of startups is severely lacking), our cultural heritage and our education system we have a great knack for designing smart systems. I and my peers often wonder how upstarts in the valley can spend so much money and come up with stuff that is so badly designed and so bloated. Both programatically and design wise.

3) The girls are beautiful.

That said there are of course many advantages to the valley, primarily momentum. This part is almost impossible in Denmark.

Edit: I don't mean to sound as a selfrighteous idiot, so I hope it doesn't sound that way :-)

My grandma is danish and I love copenhagen. A former business partner of mine is an excellent hacker based in Denmark.

I agree with what you have said, but here are the disadvantages of being based in Denmark:

1) high taxes

2) hard to start a business, compared to USA or even places like the UK or Australia

3) nearly impossible to become a permanent resident if you are a foreigner

4) Copenhagen is more expensive than California

5) Janteloven

spot on... Especially 3 and 5. My brother has been married to an Australian and they had to move to Australia, since she couldn't get a working visa in Denmark. He is an engineer, and she is a lawyer.

1 and 5 are somewhat countered by the high wages, but you are right. Because of the progressive taxing you end up paying 65% in taxes if you are a high earner. This is only for personal income though - if you keep your money in a holding company the tax rate is comparable to the US.

I guess I could have paraphrased:

Denmark is a great place to be a Danish hacker. :)

Wait, I thought I was your grandma? I'm not a Dane.

A surprisingly large percentage of great programmers I know are Danish.

It gets fecking cold in the winter and the nights are long. That gives plenty of opportunity for hacking.

Which is probably why the Finns are better hackers than the Danes.

I mean seriously, what would you spend your time doing if you lived north of the arctic circle ?

I don't live in SV, but I had the impression that if you looked around, you could still find a few people who weren't obsessed with the latest tech buzzwords, and you could bounce your ideas off of them. If the population is really 100.0% nerds, please correct me. If you have to take a car trip to find a normal person, then I'll have to change my view about how good a place it is for startuppers.

Personally, I think it would be easier to find someone like that on the Internet.

You have a firm grasp of web trends -- for someone on the Internet! ;-)

I work for a non-Silicon-Valley company that was incorporated in 2001, has had several rounds of financing, and seems to be doing quite well thank you very much, even though we don't use Ruby on Rails or have a Facebook app.

(Although my expense reimbursement checks are issued by "Silicon Valley Bank". Go figure.)

I think it's like going to LA - yeah that's where most of the major deals go down, but 8 out of 10 waitresses are also aspiring actresses. If you take a random sampling of people in the valley, you are much more likely to find people trying to break into the business than people who have already made it.

I've talked to some people about why silicon valley is where it is and some say it's pretty arbitrary, some even claim that a new "silicon prairie" if you will, could be started here. Then the temperature goes from 52 to 12 with -11 windchill and, suddenly, we realize all over again why we too want to move to California.

I thought the midwest and east coast still used gopher?

... and FTP to transfer their cave paintings? ;-)

No, man, they've upgraded to Archie.

Well this blog post has now been updated as the person who sent that email turned out to be from nyc

I live in Holmdel NJ, home of telecom. Maybe not Silicon valley, but the people here are damn bright and all the people here are as savvy as the west coasters near silicon valley.

I read this and agree that he has a good mastery of Silicon Valley folks.

Who was the email from? Perhaps it may have not been worth replying to.