Hacker News Reader

Comment by jmathai | Hacker News Reader

I grew up in Cincinnati (20 years) before moving to the valley. What he says is generally true.

Obviously success doesn't hinge on location but if I had it to do all over again I'd have moved out here for my first startup in the early 2000s. I'm here for my second startup and the serendipitous opportunities are frequent and priceless.

I know people get defensive and he does sort of take a few jabs at Cincinnati (probably a dumb move on his part) but in the end much of it is true.

Edit: added more content.

View on HN

I'm currently working for a software company in Cincinnati, and few in the tech community here would deny the benefits of SV. But there's a lot happening in Cincinnati, and great, friendly, intelligent people doing interesting things. I work with people who are core committers on major open source ruby and javascript frameworks.

Of note for you or anyone who might stop by or live in the queen city (email in profile, too if anyone wants to get in touch):

Cincinnati Web Tech Drinkup: http://www.meetup.com/Cincinnati-Web-Tech-Drinkup/

Cincinnati Coworks: http://cincycoworks.com/

QCMerge, a web conference held a few weeks ago: http://qcmerge.com

Made in Cincy (launched days ago in the wake of QCMerge): madeincincy.com

I've lived downtown for the last few years, and Cincinnati is having a renaissance. People are upset about what Austin said because the jabs aren't constructive, are increasingly unfounded, and certainly weren't fabricated by video editing as the company claims in its non-apology blog post.

It's been 4 years since I lived there but I keep in touch with several folks and talked with the CincyTechUSA guys last year. I agree a lot is happening and I think that's awesome.

But the truth is that for every link or event Cincinnati has there's probably 100 in SV. Not an exaggeration. Plus, like I said, the most valuable aspect of SV is the people. The density of technology entrepreneurs isn't matched anywhere else in the world.

It's just good to have insight for both worlds so you can make a decision on whether location plays a big enough role in your success and where you should be. For me I'd stay in SV as long as possible but my wife misses her family so we might end up back in Cincy. Starting up is 100s of micro decisions that play a role in your success - location is one of many.

And we can drink with the best of them. Actually, remember that drinking scene with Marion in "Raiders of the Lost Ark"? Yeah, we need to have a drinking match like that at the next Tech Drinkup.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com