Hot answers tagged location
18
We don't do co-working exactly, but we have been playing host to several startups in a sort of incubator situation. I think our lessons learned will probably apply to co-working.
My company, Blue Fish, has nice Class A office space in Downtown Austin. We had some extra space, so we made it available to the startups in Capital Factory's class of 2009. Each ...
6
Joydeep, it depends on a couple of factors :
If you are in the Professional services space where clients need to come meet you often. The recommendation is to get a small office.
How well you know your clients and if they know your intentions. If you have known your clients before they won't mind where your offices are as long as you can deliver.
How many ...
5
You should definitely not meet clients at home. But don't pretend you are a big company though. Meet the clients at a nice cafe or at their offices.
About changing business address: I am sorry, but nobody cares about you and your address. People will hardly notice the business address changes unless you go a long way of notifying them.
Best strategy for ...
5
My experience comes from working in open-plan offices on and off over the years.
Are there going to be programmers in the co-working space? You may not agree, but my experience is that noise is Enemy No 1 for programmers. The kind of deeply immersed, memory-intensive work that programmers do simply gets done faster in a silent environment.
I'm re-reading ...
4
From the East Bay, SF is very BART-accessible, but the hotbed of angel-investor and VC activity (Mountain View and Palo Alto) is NOT. It's actually a real pain to come down from Berkeley / Richmond / Oakland to Palo Alto. So count out East Bay.
On the peninsula side, San Mateo or Redwood City are actually great options. In-between SF and Palo Alto, ...
3
While you can start a web business from any point on the planet, as long as you have a good internet connection, there are advantages to starting your business in the right environment. Some of the most successful internet companies were started in Israel (such as ICQ and shopping.com and the companies that did well in the last TC50) despite the fact that it ...
3
Paul Graham is a bright guy, but his advice in this case is foolish. There are successful IT startups all over the US and in fact all over the world. I'm not sure that 'culture' (if it really matters at all from a pure business point of view) matters as much as a good talent pool, a decent local economy, the ability to connect with investors. US cities such ...
3
Over the past 10 years I have taken space in 3 distinctly different shared office spaces. Interestingly enough, while the "coolness" factor might have increased with each move, the collaborative/entrepreneurial culture has gone in the opposite direction.
Space 1 - A mix of independent movie makers, software developers and 3D animators. Space had a lot of ...
3
Full Disclosure: I am 100% biased towards my hometown of Houston and I think that I can safely say that this question is so tailor-made for me to answer that it almost seems like a plant.
The short answer is Houston is an incredibly supportive place to launch a tech startup.
The long answer is:
1) taxes are tolerable and largely irrelevant for a startup ...
3
I suspect that you will, in fact, be conducting business in all of the locations and, thus, will have to file in each jurisdiction (though I will restrict my discussion to the U.S. locations, because I am not familiar with Canadian law).
You should form the corporation in one of the states where a founder is located. Please see Why (not) incorporate in ...
3
Some things you should be considering:
Where will your customers be, and what are the implications for them of any given location (sales tax, for instance, and their perception of your business)?
Do you anticipate working with other people as employees, partners and associates? If so, where do you expect them to be located?
Where are you happiest to deal ...
3
A number of companies are looking at San Mateo now.
You'd be in good company there and it's a decent compromise between SF and all the action in Palo Alto and southward. This is important if you plan not to have a car. Traveling between SF and San Jose takes about an hour by Caltrain, so settling in between gives you a convenient position to meet with ...
3
There are plenty of VC's in Boston.
Here's a short list of High Tech VC's just off the top of my head.
Atlas Venture
Charles
River Ventures
General Catalyst Partners
Greylock Partners
Highland Capital Partners
Matrix Partners
Spark Capital
.406 Ventures
Many west coast VC's have offices in the Boston area (e.g. Google Ventures which just funded ...
3
The best early-stage, East Coast VCs focusing on information technology (internet/software) are generally considered to be:
Union Square Ventures
Highland
Bessemer
General Catalyst
Matrix
Spark
Charles River
Atlas
RRE
Polaris
Seed funds (or "super angels") based in East Coast include:
- Betaworks
- IA Ventures
- First Round (hybrid seed and Series A)
- ...
3
Not to be the contrarian-- but before you spend a bunch of time presenting to investors -- I would present it to some people who have a likelihood of becoming customers.
You know -- the people who determine the value of your web application by choosing to use it and potentially even pay for it?
Based on my experience when you show up and start presenting ...
2
You need to be around like minded people in order to improve your chances of success. However, improving your chances does not guarantee your success. You need to find a balance between your financial ability and your need to be in an area like the Valley that provides intangible resources. If you have plenty of funds to burn through and can afford the ...
2
A true loss leader isn't really necessary, since an accountant's or lawyer's clients -- almost by definition -- have problems judging the quality of the work. It's every consultants core problem: Clients can only judge the "product" after they bought it, sometimes not even then.
This is why reputation and (perceived) authority is so important for ...
2
I think having a Blog along with other social media tools works well.
Blog lets you connect with your community plus potential clients. On your blog you can show off your skills and depths of knowledge. Within 2-3 years you can earn that "authority" that every professional strives for.
However, the problem I face is that I am not passionate about ...
2
Short answer: No.
Long answer: what do you mean by "successful"? Something the valley has that other places can't match is their pr machine that breaks the laws of physics (the amount of energy that comes out of their buzz/gossip system seems to be more than goes in). However there's a lot of noise and it may be hard to get attention if you don't already ...
2
I agree with Jason, with his points. The top things I look out for are:
1) Strong fundamentals of the location - economic stability of the country, region, safety and support
2) Intellectual community - it important to be in the right crowd which can help you find the right team and also help you to get early feedback.
3) Investment community - startups ...
2
Paul Graham has some very interesting comments on the relevance of startup location. I'd read this before deciding on whether or not to pay extra special attention to location:
http://www.paulgraham.com/siliconvalley.html
2
Open your space for other groups to
have meetings, events, meetups,
etc... it would attract people to
your place and you can earn new
members from that.
Fast, reliable internet connection
Awesome coffee... and teas!
Organize meetups between the co-space
members, to talk about their
businesses and how they can improve
things, etc... make sure to provide the
...
2
You're over thinking it. Does any of this stuff matter?
1) Ok, this matters a little. But really just a little? Has anyone really said, omg, this business would be successful if I just didn't have this extra .5% tax I need to pay here.
2) Does this really matter to you? Are you running a restaurant? It's totally awesome to hire people all over the ...
2
I moved from a small town in Georgia 3 years ago to Boston, to be part of the web startup scene there. Since then, I've founded two startups (the first failing, the second going well and about to enter beta), and contributed in minor or major ways to several others. The number of people involved in startups that I knew well went from less than 10 or so ...
2
That depends on the business.
I used to work for a startup that developed hardware systems. The best Silicon Valley had to offer was "around the corner" access to PCB (printed circuit board) fabrication and assembly houses, tech support of all major chip suppliers, and most important - a lot of customers.
2
In terms of investors I would add that there are above 75% of all VC investment in the world are made in the Silicon Valley (I don't have the exact number, but it's in that range). And don't be fooled, getting VC investment without having some kind of network to introduce you or backup the quality of your work is much much harder. By being in the Silicon ...
2
Just make sure that you always use Americans or at least native-level English speakers to write copy, handle customer service, write your blog and or tweets, etc. A lot of times European companies use perfectly accurate English that is, nonetheless, not native-sounding, and this hurts the way they are perceived by Americans. I remember having a German ...
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