Tech Startups Don’t Need the Valley Unless They Need VC

Re:Tech Startups Don’t Need the Valley Unless They Need VC by nostrademons on Monday March 16, 2009 @01:42AM (#517813)

...outside the Valley, most people have heard of neither FriendFeed nor Seesmic. ;-)

The big advantage of living outside the valley is that you're closer to real customers - people who don't live and breathe technology 24/7. That can help you or hurt you, depending on your target market. Could something like MySpace, AOL or PlentyOfFish have started inside the Valley, considering that they succeeded by catering to idiots?

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Re:Tech Startups Don’t Need the Valley Unless They Need VC by pg on Monday March 16, 2009 @03:21AM (#517871)

There are plenty of nontechnical people in SV too. There are dentists and cooks and policemen here just like everywhere else.

AOL, incidentally, did not cater to idiots initially. Before the web it was something a lot of hackers used.

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Re:Tech Startups Don’t Need the Valley Unless They Need VC by asdflkj on Monday March 16, 2009 @09:06PM (#519127)

The problem with catering to idiots is that unless you're an idiot yourself--the particular kind of idiot comprising your target market--you have no idea what your customers want. Also, this approach would probably be too demoralizing to sustain for anyone without the record-label-executive state of mind, which is the opposite of the hacker state of mind.

[ Parent | on HN ]