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Comment by exelius | Hacker News Reader

Boston is a second-tier startup city along with Pittsburgh, Chicago, Seattle, etc. It's too expensive, it's hard to recruit good talent (too cold, too far from everywhere, etc), and there's not a ton of VC. You can do it, but you'll have an easier time of it in NYC or Texas.

Texas has a warm climate, cheap housing and low taxes, which draws a lot of startups there. Raising money can be a problem, but you also don't need nearly as much - a good engineer in SV costs $250k; the same engineer in Austin costs $110k, and it's entirely possible to live on $10k a year while bootstrapping a startup. There are also a half dozen internationally-recognized engineering schools within 2 hours of I-35.

New York just has a ton of people and a ton of money. Also, the global media machine is based there as well, which is why you see a lot of media and advertising startups coming out of NYC. NYC is also attractive to people who weren't born there.

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It's cool that you like Texas and all but the stats speak for themselves. It's SV way ahead of Boston which is a little ahead of NYC. And Boston has tons of enterprise VC which is unique. I have no problem hiring talent in Boston, and the numbers I snag engineers for are high, but nothing like the "500k salary and 2 million in stock" articles I hear about happening in SV.

Also, the whole argument that it's harder to raise money if you are in [insert any place except Silicon Valley] is suspect. My company raised money from investors in Boston, SV, and overseas, as investors were most concerned with our business, not where we were located.

As long as you can hire good talent and have a solid business, you won't have trouble raising money as long as you can jump on a plane. The issue is when you are chasing dollars for a failing business, or have no revenue.

> nothing like the "500k salary and 2 million in stock" articles I hear about happening in SV

Amusingly, the only American software engineer I know who is certifiably taking more than 500k USD a year in base (i.e. cash, pre-bonus) salary lives and works in Boston.

Pray tell, what industry?

You are dramatically underestimating Boston and over-estimating Texas.

Boston is one of the hot spots. It's actually really easy to recruit talent as there are a ton of students, it's an interesting, old city, it actually has mass transit, and not everybody is bothered by cold (some people even like it).

San Diego is way better than Austin (just look at the jobs postings and employer numbers), and some people would regard San Diego as second tier. Admittedly, they both probably qualify as the top of the second tier.

Boston isn't NYC or SF, but I think your buckets are kind of hosed. It's hard to recruit good talent and it's certainly not cheap, but there's a lot more going on in Boston than a city like Pittsburgh and to me Seattle seems choked-out by the big companies in the area.

Subjectively, Boston feels like it has more startup activity than Austin to me, as someone that moved down here for cost-of-living reasons.

Boston is a first tier startup city, clearly.

It ranked above New York for total VC dollars raised in 2014, to go with its 371 deals, versus New York's 395.

It's basically third in deal activity nationally. It's four times larger than Seattle, and perhaps ten times larger than Pittsburgh when you account for deals + money.

http://nvca.org/pressreleases/u-s-venture-capital-investment...

Your source includes all VC funding, not just tech start-ups. Boston is #1 in biotech funding (SF is almost tied), so the numbers are skewed if you're just referring to tech funding.

http://blog.startupcompass.co/the-2015-global-startup-ecosys...

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