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To jump in on this HP love fest, HP is now increasing its presence in Boston! It recently purchased a Boston-area big data analytics firm:
"the new Cambridge office represents an unprecedented investment by HP in outreach and partnerships with local entrepreneurs, venture capital firms, and the academic research community in the Boston area" (Source).
Lots of Houston folks also moved to Austin and DFW. Its a two way street.
The difference is that they go to school in Austin and then return back to Houston as quickly as possible. the great thing is that they are bringing that expertise (learned in Austin) back to Houston so Houston can benefit. Thanks TU and Austin!
Most the grads of the University of Houston and Rice stay in Houston after graduation, so that is an easily accessible professional talent pool the city can always rely on.
To jump in on this HP love fest, HP is now increasing its presence in Boston! It recently purchased a Boston-area big data analytics firm:
"the new Cambridge office represents an unprecedented investment by HP in outreach and partnerships with local entrepreneurs, venture capital firms, and the academic research community in the Boston area" (Source).
Yeah, they've really spread out across the country. HP also has large operations in Fort Collins & Loveland, Colorado and Boise, Idaho.
Boston. It had the majority of the industries that moved to Sunbelt and West Coast cities and metros and when those industries dry up and everything that helped cities like Houston goes away with the changing times, Boston I'm sure will be just fine.
Can't say the same about either of the other two though. San Francisco maybe but definitely not the rest of the Bay Area.
Interesting list of reasons from THIS article of why the Bay Area is such a technology hub (from an interview with a CEO):
Quote:
MindFlash's CEO, told me that she moved the company here because of:
1. Access to talent. Her company started in Southern California and there just wasn't the pool of programmers that could help her scale her company down there, she told me.
2. Access to ecosystem. In the Valley there are tons of lawyers, PR, marketers, and others that understand tech companies and are able to help them faster.
3. Access to capital. There's a far greater pool of angel and VC folks available up in Silicon Valley so entrepreneurs have better choice and get better terms, not to mention that the money makes quicker decisions than other places in the world.
4. Access to PR. The world's tech press lives in San Francisco, or, at least, has offices here. So, getting PR means just taking a drive vs. getting on a plane. Plus, a lot of PR is sort of accidental. Being at the right party and getting introduced to the right person means getting a story. That's hard to make happy from outside the area.
5. Plus her team liked the weather here, and the access to various things to do on weekends. Carmel, Napa, the beach, Sierra Nevada mountains, are all within a drive. Not to mention that restaurants in SF are top notch and are well documented with Foodspotting and Yelp, amongst others. Her team also likes being around other tech companies, so there's a cross-company learning process and she didn't admit it, but it's nice knowing that you can get another job if your startup fails, while other places in the world have far fewer employment opportunities for geeks.
That's fine, I understand US Operations are based in Houston. But to suggest that there are "shared headquarters" is not correct. The company's headquarters is in Palo Alto, that is where the decisions are made, not Houston.
no one said shared headquarters. You are imagining things to disagree with.
You wanted to take two pages to derail a thread like you did last night
Quote:
Originally Posted by H'ton
The difference is that they go to school in Austin and then return back to Houston as quickly as possible. the great thing is that they are bringing that expertise (learned in Austin) back to Houston so Houston can benefit. Thanks TU and Austin!
Most the grads of the University of Houston and Rice stay in Houston after graduation, so that is an easily accessible professional talent pool the city can always rely on.
I have friends who went to study and didn't come back. just like I know people from other cities here who didn't go back. Two way street
Boston. It had the majority of the industries that moved to Sunbelt and West Coast cities and metros and when those industries dry up and everything that helped cities like Houston goes away with the changing times, Boston I'm sure will be just fine.
Can't say the same about either of the other two though. San Francisco maybe but definitely not the rest of the Bay Area.
changing times? Lol, looks like the future looks bright for Houston.
Read this NY Times article on the Panama Canal Expansion.
Quote:
The port is overseeing $3 billion in updates to its berths and cranes and other facilities, many of which are being completed in anticipation of the 2014 debut of the expanded Panama Canal.....
Local officials agree that the canal’s expansion will be a financial boon to Texas — and in particular, the Port of Houston, which should see more and larger container ships docking in its berths....
Mr. Kunz expressed confidence that the port, which had a record 8,073 ships call in 2011, will be ready for the increased traffic resulting from the canal’s expansion. But he is wary about predictions of explosive, unprecedented traffic at the port....
“What we do know is that this third set of locks that’s being built is going to create a redistribution of cargo,†he said. “It’s not going to make the cargo grow. It’s just going to be a redistribution.
Jeff Moseley, president and chief executive of the Greater Houston Partnership, says the canal project is “a huge game-changer and the project of the century.†“It will take us decades to fully realize the potential of this new capacity,†he added....
Mr. Moseley is quick to emphasize the existing advantages of Houston as a port city, namely its railroad system. He said the rail lines would provide relief for highways clogged with cargo-laden trucks making the same passage as the trains, though less efficiently.
“There will be no more railroads built in America if you can imagine how prohibitive the cost would be, but Houston is blessed with this very strategic network rail — a fabulous grid that literally connects Houston between the Rocky Mountains and the Ohio Valley,†he said.
Interesting list of reasons from THIS article of why the Bay Area is such a technology hub (from an interview with a CEO):
That's pretty cool stuff! Things like that are what I was talking about before when I was speaking about Houston after its growth slows down a bit. There's a definitive culture in places like the SF Bay and Boston that are conducive to creativity, innovation, etc. This is what helps them stay ahead of the curve.
There's a relatively similar article here (though it's a bit lengthy) talking about Kendall Square in Cambridge.
The general gist of the article is referring to how Kendall Square is arguably the most potent area in the world in terms of high tech/biotech while at the same time evolving into a great urban neighborhood. Here's a couple of highlights:
-- Outside Fuji, signs of that growth are everywhere. Alexandria Real Estate is erecting a $500 million, 1.7 million-square-foot complex of office, lab, retail, and residential space, and Skanska USA is building a $70 million, 120,000-square-foot lab facility. At the other end of Kendall, where we’re heading now, MIT is building hundreds of thousands of square feet for Pfizer.
Baerkahn and I watch a pack of two dozen nattily dressed people – an international delegation, we decide – head toward Akamai, a company that literally makes the Internet work. Each day, as much as 30 percent of the world’s Web traffic passes through Akamai servers.
-- “This building is ground zero for the Kendall Square innovation scene,” Baerkahn tells me before checking in on his own office, CityRetail, one of the 450 start-ups here. Part of the team behind Android – the Google operating system that today powers more than 250 million smartphones – worked on the early days of the project here.
-- To my left is Leo von Wendorff, a native of Germany who was lured to Kendall a few weeks ago. His company, Virtual Knowledge Workers Inc., provides outsourced help in tech support, basic research, and clerical tasks. Before I know it, a woman in the Philippines is staring back at me from the screen of his phone. She waves.
To my right is Caitria O’Neill. She was just about to move to Russia when a tornado leveled her hometown of Monson, Massachusetts. Trying to help manage the town’s response, she discovered that disaster relief is about a decade behind in technology. So she stayed here, starting a company called Recovers.org to bring it up to speed.
-- “So, we’re supposed to have a drink, but here’s my proposal,” he says to the group of us. “A billion-dollar venture fund is on the 15th floor and they’re having their opening party up there. Will you guys walk with me up there, and then we’ll have a drink?”
In the past decade, CIC tenants alone have raised more than $1 billion in venture capital. So it only makes sense that the firms handing over all that money would like to be close to the people spending it. In October, Highland Capital Partners – with $3 billion invested and a satellite office in Silicon Valley – relocated its headquarters from Lexington to One Broadway’s penthouse.
Six weeks later, Charles River Ventures – another Route 128 multibillion-dollar VC firm with a branch in Silicon Valley – moved in one floor down. This is their invitation-only housewarming, a chicer version of the Venture Cafe going on below us.
-- That may explain why this international crowd is here tonight, not on the West Coast. I meet Ian Ritchie, a Scotsman who has started 35 companies and whose business card has a self-portrait and the letters CBE, meaning Commander of the Order of the British Empire. Then Selcuk Kiper of Istanbul, vice chair of the MIT Enterprise Forum in Turkey.
“Turkey opened a consulate in Boston. It’s brand-new and the [consul general’s] only job is to make links between Kendall and Turkey,” Rowe says to Kiper. So why in the world is he renting in Back Bay, not Kendall?
-- I follow only some of Ito’s message, but this much is clear: Silicon Valley grabbed the low-hanging fruit of software development and consumer Internet sites. But hardware is the next frontier, he continues, and Kendall’s strong footing in math, science, and research will make it “the new hub.”
I thought this was really interesting too and I had absolutely no idea this happened:
Talking about how “plans are overrated” and you need to be ready to “throw away your map,” Ito notes that YouTube was conceived as a dating site before it found a brilliant way to reinvent itself.
Kendall Square (and Cambridge as a whole) is really impressive. Currently companies that already have major presences there and are expanding include: Google, Novartis, Microsoft, Pfizer, Sanofi Aventis, GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca, Biogen idec, and Shire PLC. HP is making its first major expansion into the city and Oracle just made a major acquisition in the area too. This is all happening while both Amazon.com and Staples are searching for office space to open "e-commerce innovation centers" and an Anaheim-based real estate firm tries to put together a $1 billion+ mega-lab/housing development in East Cambridge.
The most impressive part of this in my opinion is that the entire city of Cambridge is 6.43 square miles. It has all those companies, MIT, Harvard, and more office space (http://grubb-ellis.com/Forecast2012/PDFs/Boston_OFF_2011_4Q.pdf - broken link) than the CBDs of Tampa/St.Petersburg (http://grubb-ellis.com/Forecast2012/PDFs/Tampa_OFF_2011_4Q.pdf - broken link) and Orlando (http://grubb-ellis.com/Forecast2012/PDFs/Orlando_OFF_2011_4Q.pdf - broken link) combined.
However one major problem about Boston's tech scene is that its money isn't as "quick" as the Bay Area's when it comes to making decisions (which sbarn's article mentioned), and its familiarity with consumer tech isn't too great. It usually creates more behind-the-scenes companies, which is probably why so many Bay Area firms buy up so many of the firms there once they start getting big.
Sunbelt cities are a fad. They won't last the way East Coast cities do. Neither will West Coast cities except maybe San Francisco and LA because of the entertainment industry.
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