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My aspiration in life is to become a entrepreneur and because of my background (4 years as a software developer) I figure I would go best if I start out as a technical founder at a start up.

I guess I have a few questions,

What is the best city in the world to live in as a entrepreneur? (I currently live near Sydney). I assume its most likely San Fransisco bay area?

Whats the best method to go out and network and meet people if your in my position?

Is 4 years experience in IT and mainly web development enough for investor's/founders to be interested? I mean I have my own projects I have been working on my self so I understand the technicality's behind starting a company.

I dont have a degree, but have worked for big enterprises is not having a degree going to hurt me?

Any other advice is greatly appreciated.

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I just found and read this which helps - jasonlbaptiste.com/startups/… – DontJudgeThoseWhoTryAndFail Aug 30 '10 at 14:03
I like your handle on this site. :-) – Jason Aug 30 '10 at 17:24
I encourage people to judge my failures. It's a great way to practice ignoring them. – JeffO Aug 30 '10 at 18:21

2 Answers

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Here's a great article (I didn't write) about becoming a technical founder for you to read; addresses all your concerns.

To answer some of your questions myself:

  • For bootstrapping it doesn't matter where you live. For finding a co-founder or getting funded it does matter where you live, so it depends on the type of company you want to start.
  • To "go out and network" there is no silver bullet. Networking is a combination of doing and luck. There's no one answer to whether you'll find inspiration or a cofounder at a local hackers meeting, on an online forum, on LinkedIn, or on someone else's blog.
  • Don't worry about your experience or education level. Neither of those is correlated with business success.
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If I can give you an advice that took me so long to realize myself: If you feelyou want to start your own company, don't hesitate and don't wait for others to join in. Actually this is the biggest mistake you might do, because you won't make your startup.

What you should do is start directly even if you are alone. Just focus on the idea yo have work for 2 to 4 weeks on it then go online as fast as you can.

Don't expect you will get millions of users, so don't design your application to be scalable for millions. Just make it work for few hundreds, and then you will start enhancing it as you go.

Give them a feedback page so they can tell you what they think and what they suggest. Few will do it, so you will have to go and ask for feedback on forums or specialized sites like this one.

Add small feature every period of time this way users feel that your site is alive and you are active and motivated. Some of them will like that and will be using it on regular basis and will eventually spread the word around them.

Hope it helps good luck

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"Just do it" :) – jorgem Aug 30 '10 at 22:48

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