Forbes - San Diego Best Place to Launch a Startup in 2014

[Pedro2000]

Originally Posted by sdurbanite

Everyone know that no one comes close to the Bay Area when it comes to VCs, but why not mention that SD punches above it's weight when compared to other metros? You never seem to fail to make SD look worse than it is, no matter what the subject.

Venture capital investments, by city - Stats and the City | Crain's New York Business

America's Leading Metros for Venture Capital - Richard Florida - The Atlantic Cities

Sometimes I think people just don't want to accept the problems San Diego has.
VC funding has been up in many cities, but San Diego and VC is down. So, no VC and San Diego just dont go hand in hand when many other cities have an increase in VC funding and San Diego is at a 10 year low.

County Venture Capital Funding Is at 10-Year Low; $757 Million Invested in 2013 | San Diego Business Journal

[sdurbanite]

Originally Posted by Pedro2000

Sometimes I think people just don't want to accept the problems San Diego has.
VC funding has been up in many cities, but San Diego and VC is down. So, no VC and San Diego just dont go hand in hand when many other cities have an increase in VC funding and San Diego is at a 10 year low.

County Venture Capital Funding Is at 10-Year Low; $757 Million Invested in 2013 | San Diego Business Journal

But it's still higher than a lot of places, isn't it? Not as dire as you always make things out to be.

[earlyretirement]

Originally Posted by sdurbanite

But it's still higher than a lot of places, isn't it? Not as dire as you always make things out to be.

I totally agree there are far worse places and like I said.....I've met a TON of entrepreneurs here and many of them indeed got start-up funding for their companies from VC's. It actually surprised me. I honestly didn't know too much about the start up scene in San Diego as you typically never hear about it.

But definitely lots of start-ups here. Funny I went to go listen to Dave McClure at an event that the start-up scene here hosted and I saw a guy that looked familiar but I couldn't remember where from. Well, the other day he comes up to me while I'm dropping off my daughter at school. That's where I remembered him from. We're going to have coffee next week.

Definitely I think it would surprise people at the number of start-ups here.

[Pedro2000]

Originally Posted by sdurbanite

But it's still higher than a lot of places, isn't it? Not as dire as you always make things out to be.

It's not about being dire, it's about VC funding when compared to many areas that are more successful.
People in the startup community always have discussions around getting more VC interest in SD, getting incubators here, getting more mentors, etc.

A lot of the SD startup space is kind of hidden. As EarlyRetirement said, you'd be surprised how many successful or startups are around. They have an annual startup crawl downtown now, they have other meetups and events. There are many of us on FB who share ideas and stories. But the challenge is that many startups in SD are kind of hidden from one another and the surrounding communities. One challenge is that SD is so spread out as a 'city' as it is compared to say Palo Alto where everybody who starts up a company in Palo Alto probably hangs out around stanford or downtown. Same goes for Mountainview, SunnyVale is building something and so on. San Diego just doesn't have that vibe or atmosphere.

Not sure what the reason is or not, but everybody and their brother up in San Fran and the bay area seems to know about that new startup down the street. SD seems to have far more 1-3 person super secret startups that only a few people know about. And many of them aren't mentors or don't participate. Or there are many successful people who would rather not be serial entrepreneurs.

That's the difference to me. It's not about being in dire straights, its admitting there are issues and not just pretending they don't exist. If you're in the startup space, there are many trying to market success stories, meetups, getting people interested and integrated into the startup space. But it's challenging. Again, many in the SD Startup scene are far more secretive compared to the Bay Area and SV. Plus a lot of SD is Biotech, which isn't always huge in the VC space and it's an entirely different mindset compared to tech startups.

I also think the mindset in SD is more individual and I want to succeed and don't care if somebody else does. YOu have that competition in SV, but the reality is half of SV has worked with one another at some point and they all come from a few companies that were super successful.. That breeds a lot of what to do , what not to do and so on. In SD you have some success stories that kind of leave the space and don't care to mentor or start another company.

Perfect example is the Steve Jobs of the world, the Google founds (Brin & Page) Paypal(Elon MusK) go on to start other companies(Jobs sold Pixar for billions), Musk now has Tesla, SolarCity, SpaceX and so on. There are plenty of smaller success stories where people don't just cash out and move on to a laid back life. SD rarely has the super success stories that keep creating new companies or wind up investing in new companies.

I mean Qualcomm is a huge hug success story and still a huge billion dollar company and they aren't that old compared to some Fortune 500 companies. Microsoft and Apple have been around longer than Qualcomm. But they just don't seem that invested in making SD a thriving startup market or they didn't have thousands of their former employees go off and start up thousands of companies. Not sure why, but it's a far different scene.

If you are in the startup space in SD, the reality is many of the more successful ones will get offers to move up to Silicon Valley. Or now Texas and so on. That doesn't help SD in the long run. It doesn't help any of your employees. It just means you stick it out in SD and try and make it work, or you move the company someplace else because some other city or VC gave you a lot of money and help to do so. And that's because the VC money in SD pretty much sucks for most start ups. It's harder to get great employees to come to SD from someplace else. It's hard to convince mentors to be in SD.

And speaking of Mcclure, great guy to learn from, but he's a Silicon Valley guy who started an Incubator in Mountainview. He now has one down in Mexico City. It's great he comes to talk in SD, but he really has no relationship with SD besides being here for some presentations and conferences. Huge difference. It would be great if SD had it's own McClure. But it really doesn't. He's also a guy who probably would try to convince a SD company to move to SV.