This sounds very methodical: They have "innovators", "strategists" and "gurus".
What they'll be lacking, though, is access to the entire nation's talent pool. They have no desire to attract people from all over. Unlike Boston or Silicon Valley, PHL is not a desirable place to move to.
There is a residual talent pool of generally undervalued developers in every urban area that is not Boston, NYC, Seattle, and San Francisco. Lots of smart, ambitious people simply cannot relocate to trendy areas.
There are fewer startups, and fewer resources for those startups, in Minneapolis. However, that doesn't mean there are no startups there.
Meanwhile, cost of living and competition differences in underutilized areas make startups in underhyped areas more efficient and easier to staff, up to a point.
I really wonder how much this meme about how much easier it is to staff in San Francisco comes from social ineptness. It always seems like the people infected with it simply can't conceive of recruiting in any way except national job postings and IRC. Our last 3 hires came from meetups we organized.
Finally, if you're really freaked out about finding developers, put your money where your paranoia is: hire remote devs.
No PG is a big drawback, but you're wrong about Philly.
Philly's got lots of great restaurants most of which are BYOB, plenty of cool live music spots, great bars, cheap taxis, way more affordable downtown housing, etc. A friend of mine pays what I'm paying in rent: he lives in a spacious apartment overlooking the waterfront in Philly; I live in a tiny third-floor walk-up a mile away from the closest T stop outside Davis Square. Crime is starting to become a problem there again, but other than that it's a great place to live.
Silicon Valley a desirable place? It's an overpriced hell-hole of tacky drive-thru suburbia. The only reason to move there is to make money. Philadelphia has a lot of nice neighborhoods and accessible cultural amenities.
I believe the argument for the necessity of relocating to Boston or Silicon Valley for the kind of stuff ycombinator does has centered on the liquidity event. My $5 says that avenue to riches will be greatly diminished and that steady cash withdrawals from owner's equity will be a much more popular path to riches, as it has been in most businesses for most of commercial history. But what do I know.
If you want to do something seriously technical that's going to take years and millions, then yeah, I'll allow that it's a good idea to move to a hub city with a deep talent pool and deep pocketed investors. But that probably doesn't describe 98% of the web and software opportunities (and there are also the many glaring exceptions such as RIMM). Most sub $10 million software opportunities are probably in straightforward application of the programming craft to solving industry problems, often in conjunction with good business development skills. The industries and businesses are mostly not in Silicon Valley and Boston. And you hardly need a city of geniuses to write some software.
This is quite exciting. I was born and raised in West Philadelphia, where I spent my days chilling out, maxing, relaxing all cool, and shootin some b-ball outside of the school.
Though I've since moved west to be closer to start-up opportunities (and after an unfortunate physical confrontation with two gents up to no good), I applaud their efforts.
>The three men are willing to put up the money for DreamIt's first fund but would like to get some economic-development money from the state and/or the city for it, and aren't willing to back future funds without assistance.
Clearly they are not very confident. There are a number of state funded early stage venture capital in Pennsylvania and they all lose money.
I'm just wondering what their expertise is in comparison to YC and other YC look-alikes. I mean if I were choosing something outside of YC, I would go with TechStars, Europe, and probably the newer Launchbox Digital.
They seem to be in it to benefit on someone else's creativity versus YC (and possibly others, time will tell) are in it to make "something useful."
I live near philly and there's always "brain drain" talk (aka how can we keep wharton grads in the city?) It looks like a lot of their speakers and mentors are in finance/accounting. So whatever they say, I think this project is not really about software startups.
What they'll be lacking, though, is access to the entire nation's talent pool. They have no desire to attract people from all over. Unlike Boston or Silicon Valley, PHL is not a desirable place to move to.
Also, they lack the pull of having a PG who is known to a hacker community. This is the main reason why you and I can't clone YC (and yes, I've thought about it: http://www.gaborcselle.com/blog/2006/04/on-cloning-ycombinat...)