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I live on the west coast. Of France. I'm currently looking at starting my own web startup. I have the idea, the expertise, even the cofounder. I'm reading a lot on the subject, and I intend to bootstrap as far as possible.

Obviously there are a lot of imponderables at this very early stage, but I was wondering whether location makes that much of a difference.

If one goes by what one reads online, to really get this thing off the ground I would need to move to Silicon Valley, New York or some other world famous tech hotbed.

I do not personally believe that, because it seems too simplistic. In fact I suspect it is rather more hard to find funding because of the level of competition, whereas where I live I can probably find a grant quite easily.

Am I wrong? Is location really that important?

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2 Answers

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There are many factors to consider in evaluating the value of a move.

  • Access to capital

If your company has large upfront capital requirements, being in a setting with VC's who aren't afraid to take a risk has obvious benefits.

  • Access to talent

If you're a startup in a place with relatively few startups, you have a real shot at attracting the top programmers locally, because you're the only game in town. In the Bay Area you're competing against Google, Facebook and all the rest.

  • Access to other companies

For some startups it's really important to have access to other companies for partnerships, distribution and so on. For others it's much less important.

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All you need to have is money for domain and server, if you startup will "shoot", it will "shoot" and investors will give you money and relocate you to any place of the world.

If not, then :(

Just google about 17-years old Russian boy, who created chatroulette.

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