Seattle and startups

If you went to the Seattle 2.0 Awards last night you got the live version of Mark Suster’s great Techcrunch post about startup culture and the elements that drive it. Mark hits on a number of issues that became themes for the conversation throughout the evening: where is the recycled capital in Seattle? Where is the support network of superconnectors and regional boosters?

For some time I’ve felt like Seattle acts like a bigger city than it is. The population of the San Francisco Bay Area is about 7.5 million. New York City is 8.1 million. In contrast, the greater Seattle area houses a mere 3.3 million people, and that includes a lot of suburban landscape that frankly does not contribute to the technology startup space.

But we do have many, if not all, of the ingredients needed to put together an amazing culture of innovation and business success. We have an incredible university in our backyard (University of Washington) that churns out graduates every year and those local entrepreneurs that are here are incredibly friendly, collaborative, and enthusiastic. Not to mention irrationally attached to our beautiful city.

You can’t throw a rock without hitting a local barcamp, meetup, or startup weekend. For my own part I go to dozens of events, both local and around the country, over the course of the year, and talk to all kinds of entrepreneurs with new projects, and when I’m in other cities I always find a significant number of people from Seattle, getting out there and being part of the conversation.

I think it’s incredible that Seattle is in the national startup conversation as much as it is already. Even with our disadvantages to the Valley and to New York, we are competitive to people that want to launch a startup.

The kind of engineering talent in this city is what draws companies like Google, Facebook, and Zynga to open offices in downtown Seattle. People like Peter Chee and Jacob Sayles are building a network of co-working spaces where early stage companies (or entrepreneurial individuals) can find a support network as they work through all kinds of issues facing startups, not the least of which is just having a community to belong to.

One of the things I kept hearing last night was that Seattle is “poised” to be a startup city. But I think we’re already moving — we are past the starting point.

I think that entrepreneurs will only find this city more attractive as the number of existing Seattle startups grows, and the infrastructure along with it, and I am very excited for that community to be here in Seattle.