This is really a description of why I'm bored with TechCrunch, not why I'm bored with the Bay Area.
The Valley is a lot more than the startup "scene". I just went to the Tech Museum in San Jose today (well, yesterday now). What struck me - aside from all the "sponsored by" notices - is just how much actual, genuine innovation goes on here.
Think of all the things that we, as humans, can do now that we couldn't even dream of fifteen years ago. We have rovers running around on Mars (well, a rover - RIP Spirit), performing experiments and sending back photos in near real-time that can be viewed by millions of people on the Internet. We can type a few words into our browser and get back information about nearly any topic imaginable. We can visit any place on Earth, in 3D, from both the air and the ground, without leaving our computer screen. We have computers that can fit in your pocket with more processing power than $10K servers from 10 years ago. We can read your entire human genome for a couple hundred bucks, and predict whether you're likely to get one of any number of different diseases. We can even alter the genes of a living human being to treat several conditions that used to be a death sentence.
Now think of how many of those innovations happened in the valley. Where would we be without NASA, Google, Apple, and Genentech?
I believe a lot of the problem is a certain fetishization of startups that's been going on lately, where the important thing is not what you do, but merely that you're a "startup". TechCrunch feeds into that directly, as does SXSW, and I think a lot of the author's problem is that his peer group has essentially bought into the hype cycle.
But if you follow the technology and how it can be applied to help humankind, and only consider the "startup" aspect later, there's a very different picture. Because people in the Bay Area are still doing very, very cool things. The only problem is, they're too busy doing cool things to go publicity hunting. And there're lots of other people who're doing pretty lame things but have plenty of time to pitch it. This is how it's always been - at the exact time that Larry and Sergey were working on Google in the garage, Pets.com was raising hundreds of millions in venture capital, and Kozmo.com was delivering goods to your doorstep for well under cost.
The Valley is a lot more than the startup "scene". I just went to the Tech Museum in San Jose today (well, yesterday now). What struck me - aside from all the "sponsored by" notices - is just how much actual, genuine innovation goes on here.
Think of all the things that we, as humans, can do now that we couldn't even dream of fifteen years ago. We have rovers running around on Mars (well, a rover - RIP Spirit), performing experiments and sending back photos in near real-time that can be viewed by millions of people on the Internet. We can type a few words into our browser and get back information about nearly any topic imaginable. We can visit any place on Earth, in 3D, from both the air and the ground, without leaving our computer screen. We have computers that can fit in your pocket with more processing power than $10K servers from 10 years ago. We can read your entire human genome for a couple hundred bucks, and predict whether you're likely to get one of any number of different diseases. We can even alter the genes of a living human being to treat several conditions that used to be a death sentence.
Now think of how many of those innovations happened in the valley. Where would we be without NASA, Google, Apple, and Genentech?
I believe a lot of the problem is a certain fetishization of startups that's been going on lately, where the important thing is not what you do, but merely that you're a "startup". TechCrunch feeds into that directly, as does SXSW, and I think a lot of the author's problem is that his peer group has essentially bought into the hype cycle.
But if you follow the technology and how it can be applied to help humankind, and only consider the "startup" aspect later, there's a very different picture. Because people in the Bay Area are still doing very, very cool things. The only problem is, they're too busy doing cool things to go publicity hunting. And there're lots of other people who're doing pretty lame things but have plenty of time to pitch it. This is how it's always been - at the exact time that Larry and Sergey were working on Google in the garage, Pets.com was raising hundreds of millions in venture capital, and Kozmo.com was delivering goods to your doorstep for well under cost.