Micah, some great points throughout... I've had a number of opportunities to move from DC to SF and each time, I've declined it. One of the major things has been the big fish/small pond thing. In DC, the intensity and amount of chatter is a fraction of SF and that much easier to participate in.
arubenstein
· 1 year ago
Great post Micah...
If you want to talk Boulder-related success stories how about considering the local biotech sector, I mean really...come on, where is the love? e.g. Myogen to Gilead (NASDAQ: GILD) for $2.5B & Pharmion to Celgene (NASDAQ: CELG) for $2.9B; on the fund-raising side this year Taligen Therapeutics did a $65M Series B & Sierra Neuropharmaceuticals closed a $22M Series A; on the IPO side Allos Therapeutics (NASDAQ: ALTH) & Array Biopharma (NASDAQ: ARRY) both achieved liquidity via the public markets. And that is just a quick scan. Colorado is an unambiguous center of excellence for the development and cultivation of exciting intellectual property across a vast repertoire of sectors as well as calling home to a growing pool of seasoned serial entrepreneurs, sophisticated executive teams capable of "getting the ball across the goal line", and importantly home to (an increasing) cadre of institutional and angel investors who are integral catalysts to our community's growth trajectory.
micah
· 1 year ago
My bad. There are a lot of sectors that I am unaware of (and should probably know more about). Thanks for setting me straight!!
msitarzewski
· 1 year ago
I love the idea that Boulder is no longer a place entrepreneurs and VCs just fly over for meetings on the coasts. There is real, very real stuff happening here and in time everyone will know. Colorado based entrepreneurs just need to keep on doing. The rest will come.
Melissa Hourigan
· 1 year ago
Micah, per our conversation at the Thin Air Summit cocktail party, this is a topic that is fascinating to me. I am a Colorado Native but found the passion in San Francisco during the tech craze was intoxicating. When I moved back to Denver to be closer to family, I missed that energy and then discovered some of the folks like yourself that have that same passion and energy, they just don't have the same "LOOK at ME" mentality. Okay, maybe you have it a little bit with that pink hat but it is very different. I love that the community here is a small one but one that exudes the same level of passion if not more for their business and the businesses of others. There seems to be a true community-vibe here that isn't superficial. But I still believe that Boulder and Colorado overall deserve a little bit of recognition for the brilliant people, ideas and companies born in our state. I must say that I love seeing the Current TV piece playing frequently and love the way the story was told. Thanks for the interesting look at how Ligit is doing without the chest beating that others have to do.
Derek Scruggs
· 1 year ago
If your focus is on fundraising, then "look at me" is pretty useful because it reinforces the perception that you're a player and so investors are a little more comfortable taking a risk on you. However, if you're bootstrapped and profitable, or at least past the fundraising stage, it's not nearly as useful. Especially if you're a business services provider that makes money directly from customers, not advertising. Fortunately we're in the latter case. In fact, we've had record revenue each of the last three months even as the economic news gets worse.
As it happens, a lot of our customers are in Silicon Valley, but the vast majority (as in over 90%) are in the rest of the world and most don't know or care about Web 2.0
Devin Reams
· 1 year ago
Just a quick 'apples to apples' point, not to entirely interrupt your valid points: Twitter doesn't rely soley on web page traffic. I still use instant messaging all the time. And I don't think that includes m.twitter.com.
micah
· 1 year ago
Totally agree. I'm not sure how compete counts api calls. Clearly it would also indicate that the average Lijit user gets only 10 searches per month (which we know not to be true) and that the average Twitter user visits twitter.com 100/month. I was indicating that there was a liklihood that the tool is broken equally for all (and also why I included quantcast, which has twitter out ahead)
Sean Porter
· 1 year ago
Per Biz Stone:
"So, the API which has easily 10 times more traffic than the website, has been really very important to us."
Which has been a known fact for a long time, but not really relevant to this post. Lijit's and FriendFeed's API calls are also not counted. On top of that, most people dont visit the Lijit home page directly either...
Sean Porter
· 1 year ago
Ok. Maybe make things more interesting, take Biz at his word, do a 10x on the Twitter traffic, then compare the actual Lijit API calls + web traffic against that? The fruit would be more similar that way?
Either way, I don't mean for it to detract from the bigger point that Boulder is making things happen. It does concern me that certain aspects of the Boulder scene find 'Startup Culture' superior to 'Small Business Culture' when it would likely benefit more from the latter.
Aaron Brazell
· 1 year ago
Two things.
1) Sarah Lacey, as wonderful and beautiful as she is, is full of shit. Still. I did not heckle her at SXSW just to be an ass. I heckled her because she's tone deaf. And even though we've said our piece and cleared the air, it does not make her any less tone deaf. What Sarah has to do is get out of the bubble and get into the real world where companies are rocking it without making a big deal of themselves. She needs to step outside of the Robert Scobles and Mike Arringtons, not to mention Techmemes of the world and realize thetes an entire ecosystem of tech hat exists outside of her shallow Valley experience.
2) You're right, Micah. Boulder is rocking it and it's rocking it in a variety of multidimensional ways - from actual startups, to actual movements. Actual entrepreneurs (that then go to the Valley and rock it) and actual ideas.
Jud Valeski
· 1 year ago
great post. I've always wanted to write it myself. the timing's funny as some friends and I just wrapped up this very conversation a few hours ago. in a nutshell, actions speaks louder than words. Boulder's action-to-words ratio is _much_ greater than other markets. it's not a big self-promoting town (at least in the software sector) so if that's your gig, you're better off elsewhere.
the reality, however, is that Boulder is small, and the mother of software markets, the valley, is an order of magnitude larger; it's a large city (SF + peninsula). large cities offer radically different environments on all tiers (some good, some bad). when big city folk come to visit the relative country mouse, some of them have adverse reactions because there isn't, relatively, enough going on to keep them busy/happy. I personally equate that "enough going on" to background noise that some find comforting/necessary.
I grew up in Boulder, and went to the Valley in '95 to do fun/amazing things, with fun/amazing people. it was a blast. I came back to Boulder (before the bubble burst mind you) to increase the signal to noise ratio around me as the valley had become deafening with mindless chatter. I knew it was the right decision going in, and each of the ten years since moving back have reaffirmed that.
when folks come into town, some love it, and some hate it; same with any town/city. noisy visitors wind up going back to their noisy comfort zones, and "doers" tend to stick around.
so, actions speak louder than words. back to work.
micah
· 1 year ago
Jud - First, let me apologize for thinking you were a transplant (its an easy thing to do around here). Which is kinda the other point. People choose to live in Boulder for a myriad of reasons. Most people that move to the Valley, much like Hollywood, do it to "make their way/ name." How can one not self-promote if thats your goal?
All Comments
If you want to talk Boulder-related success stories how about considering the local biotech sector, I mean really...come on, where is the love? e.g. Myogen to Gilead (NASDAQ: GILD) for $2.5B & Pharmion to Celgene (NASDAQ: CELG) for $2.9B; on the fund-raising side this year Taligen Therapeutics did a $65M Series B & Sierra Neuropharmaceuticals closed a $22M Series A; on the IPO side Allos Therapeutics (NASDAQ: ALTH) & Array Biopharma (NASDAQ: ARRY) both achieved liquidity via the public markets. And that is just a quick scan. Colorado is an unambiguous center of excellence for the development and cultivation of exciting intellectual property across a vast repertoire of sectors as well as calling home to a growing pool of seasoned serial entrepreneurs, sophisticated executive teams capable of "getting the ball across the goal line", and importantly home to (an increasing) cadre of institutional and angel investors who are integral catalysts to our community's growth trajectory.
probably know more about). Thanks for setting me straight!!
As it happens, a lot of our customers are in Silicon Valley, but the vast majority (as in over 90%) are in the rest of the world and most don't know or care about Web 2.0
would also indicate that the average Lijit user gets only 10 searches
per month (which we know not to be true) and that the average Twitter
user visits twitter.com 100/month. I was indicating that there was a
liklihood that the tool is broken equally for all (and also why I
included quantcast, which has twitter out ahead)
"So, the API which has easily 10 times more traffic than the website, has been really very important to us."
http://blog.programmableweb.com/2007/09/10/twit...
Either way, I don't mean for it to detract from the bigger point that Boulder is making things happen. It does concern me that certain aspects of the Boulder scene find 'Startup Culture' superior to 'Small Business Culture' when it would likely benefit more from the latter.
1) Sarah Lacey, as wonderful and beautiful as she is, is full of shit. Still. I did not heckle her at SXSW just to be an ass. I heckled her because she's tone deaf. And even though we've said our piece and cleared the air, it does not make her any less tone deaf. What Sarah has to do is get out of the bubble and get into the real world where companies are rocking it without making a big deal of themselves. She needs to step outside of the Robert Scobles and Mike Arringtons, not to mention Techmemes of the world and realize thetes an entire ecosystem of tech hat exists outside of her shallow Valley experience.
2) You're right, Micah. Boulder is rocking it and it's rocking it in a variety of multidimensional ways - from actual startups, to actual movements. Actual entrepreneurs (that then go to the Valley and rock it) and actual ideas.
the reality, however, is that Boulder is small, and the mother of software markets, the valley, is an order of magnitude larger; it's a large city (SF + peninsula). large cities offer radically different environments on all tiers (some good, some bad). when big city folk come to visit the relative country mouse, some of them have adverse reactions because there isn't, relatively, enough going on to keep them busy/happy. I personally equate that "enough going on" to background noise that some find comforting/necessary.
I grew up in Boulder, and went to the Valley in '95 to do fun/amazing things, with fun/amazing people. it was a blast. I came back to Boulder (before the bubble burst mind you) to increase the signal to noise ratio around me as the valley had become deafening with mindless chatter. I knew it was the right decision going in, and each of the ten years since moving back have reaffirmed that.
when folks come into town, some love it, and some hate it; same with any town/city. noisy visitors wind up going back to their noisy comfort zones, and "doers" tend to stick around.
so, actions speak louder than words. back to work.
an easy thing to do around here). Which is kinda the other point.
People choose to live in Boulder for a myriad of reasons. Most people
that move to the Valley, much like Hollywood, do it to "make their way/
name." How can one not self-promote if thats your goal?