How to Succeed for Tech Entrepreneurs: Stroll Down University Avenue?

Do tech startups achieve a clear advantage by locating themselves in a tech hub like Palo Alto, Boston, or (my personal favorite) Boulder? Many old-school investors think so. But physical proximity is becoming less and less important as online social tools bring casual chance encounters and rich human interaction to wherever you work.

Paul Graham argues that tech hubs like Silicon Valley still matter even when the business of tech startups is undergoing radical change. He thinks physical proximity gives a tech startup a necessary edge:

I’ve thought a lot about this question, and it seems to me that the increasing cheapness of web startups will if anything increase the importance of startup hubs. The value of startup hubs, like centers for any kind of business, lies in something very old-fashioned: face to face meetings. No technology in the immediate future will replace walking down University Ave and running into a friend who tells you how to fix a bug that’s been bothering you all weekend, or visiting a friend’s startup down the street and ending up in a conversation with one of their investors.

But social web tools do in fact make such casual and chance encounters possible. You can find the resolution to a bug on Twitter. You can “run into” an investor on a blog.

And chances are good that the person who knows how to solve your bug is not walking down University Avenue. He may be sitting in Bangalore or Budapest or Berlin. The investor who might give you advice or funds? She meets with your friend’s company over the phone, because she’s at a conference in Seattle or Sydney or Salzburg. You’ll have better luck connecting with them online.

Are face to face meetings better? They do have value in creating trust and rapport and they’re what many people are used to. As our tools and our practices and our attitudes change, however, you’ll see more people choosing online alternatives for their convenience, reach, and feasibility. The more people choose the online alternatives, the less it will make sense to count on geographic coincidence rather than hyperconnectedness.

How can you learn to use these new-fangled tools and techniques to make hyperconnected online work and startups successful, while you live where you want? Why, by reading Web Worker Daily of course. For entrepreneurial advice, check out our sister site FoundRead.

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