There is nothing wrong with being a startup and being solidly profitable, you know?
Only VC-backed startups need to "take over the world" because the VCs need their 10x rockstar.
A company doing $50 million per year with a handful of employees is going to be way more profitable for everybody than a VC-fueled rocket that has a 99% chance of flaming out. Remember MP3.com? Lots of San Diego tech people still do ...
I view the original assessment as "San Diego tech workers understand the reality of their value and can't be taken for a ride by venture capitalists--woe is me."
I found that San Diego tech workers generally have higher clue than most geographic areas.
The less experienced are very solid workers and learn really quickly. However, they're not 4 year Stanford students with filthy rich parents who can afford to go bankrupt multiple times. They're coming from community colleges and state schools, and they need to earn money. In return, they'll work their ass off for you.
In addition, there are quite a few very experienced greybeards scattered in that scene (tech in San Diego goes WAY back--Linkabit spawned a bunch and computers were huge early--Silicon Beach Software and PC Power and Cooling for example). However, they are going to demand appropriate compensation and will not put up with bullshit. I love working with them.
Don't like the San Diego tech scene? Your loss--my gain.
Nah the original assessment was too many San Diego tech workers would rather go surfing or play networked first-person shooter games than get something momentous done. There was always something more important to do than do the work and build the thing and make a difference in the world. I did the San Diego startup scene for 25 years. I worked at MP3.com; employee 12 I think. I also started 3 companies in La Jolla, was very active in the SD startup scene for many years. There are great engineers there, don't get me wrong. But the work ethic is simply different than SV, which is just the way it is, not gonna change. I don't think I'll ever do another startup in San Diego though. Elsewhere, sure, but not there.
Used to run ads in 1988-90 in ComputorEdge for my first startup (Coconut Computing; we ran the COCONET online service in San Diego then). Didn't they change their name to ByteBuyer? We used to call them ByteBuyor to pay homage to the original name.
Only VC-backed startups need to "take over the world" because the VCs need their 10x rockstar.
A company doing $50 million per year with a handful of employees is going to be way more profitable for everybody than a VC-fueled rocket that has a 99% chance of flaming out. Remember MP3.com? Lots of San Diego tech people still do ...
I view the original assessment as "San Diego tech workers understand the reality of their value and can't be taken for a ride by venture capitalists--woe is me."
I found that San Diego tech workers generally have higher clue than most geographic areas.
The less experienced are very solid workers and learn really quickly. However, they're not 4 year Stanford students with filthy rich parents who can afford to go bankrupt multiple times. They're coming from community colleges and state schools, and they need to earn money. In return, they'll work their ass off for you.
In addition, there are quite a few very experienced greybeards scattered in that scene (tech in San Diego goes WAY back--Linkabit spawned a bunch and computers were huge early--Silicon Beach Software and PC Power and Cooling for example). However, they are going to demand appropriate compensation and will not put up with bullshit. I love working with them.
Don't like the San Diego tech scene? Your loss--my gain.