You can start, and grow, a startup anywhere

One of the common misconceptions about startups is that you need to be in the valley to build one, or certain types of ones.

I started mine, an OSS mobile dev company, right smack-dab in the Midwest. Madison, to be precise. Over the last year and a half we’ve grown to a team of 16, empowered developers around the world to build nearly one million mobile apps, and raised about $4M from VCs in major cities around the country. And we’re just getting started.

With all the startup thought leaders telling you to do this and not do that, I think it’s useful to hear the side that has actually done it differently, instead of just talking about it or pushing a hidden agenda.

As the valley becomes increasingly locked out for those that don’t have a $20M+ Series A to hire and get office space, smaller cities around the country and the world will be increasingly appealing for startups just getting off the ground, or those with a couple $MM in funding.

If you’re doing it differently, I just want you to know that you can do it. If you have a great team and customers/users that love your product, you have the most important piece of the puzzle that a specific location isn’t going to magically provide you. You can hire great people. You can find an office that’s yours to build a culture and a team. You can reach customers in any city in any country that has access to the internet.

If you have that, investors and partners will listen, no matter where you are. If you don’t, no one anywhere will fix that for you.

So, we know that we can build and grow a startup anywhere. The question should be, what do you do after that? How do you best position yourself to continue to scale once you’ve proved you’re on to something and convinced enough people of the same?

We should be talking about that, because my hunch is that most cities can support that kind of growth, too, but they need to do more to get there. They need to be employee friendly, they need to be progressive (news flash: conservative values repulse most tech workers). They need to be easy to travel to (SFO directs are a must). They need to be places that spouses and ex-employees can continue to find great work (relocation is a lot harder when that job is the only interesting one in town). They need to invest ahead of the curve to stay places new generations love to live. They need to support their industry instead of letting politics slowly destroy it.

They need to put in the work to support the very companies they incubated, otherwise they might not stay once the cost of anywhere else is irrelevant.

There is a huge opportunity right now for the smaller, more affordable, more family-friendly places around the world to take up the cause of the startup. The cities that do this best and then continue to grow with the companies they’ve fostered will find themselves with high-paying employers that invest in beautiful offices and create magnets to move more people there. Their future depends on it.

Because you can start a startup anywhere, and you can grow one anywhere, too.