Insulated Yet Isolated
Outside the Valley Perspective
For the better part of 2 years, I’ve been saying the phrase “insulated yet isolated”.
Last week, I had a chance to truly understand the meaning, as myself and my cofounder Travis made our first official trip to the Valley on behalf of our third startup: Ambition.
Don’t get me wrong — we travel well (jason bourne-esque) — but our focus has been traveling to customers and building our product.
backstory
Almost 3 years ago, largely on a whim and fueled by love, I moved to Chattanooga, TN. Shortly thereafter, I lured my two cofounders here. We started a company. Then another. And now another.
During conversations with peers from around the world, the same question arises every time: “Why are you in Chattanooga?”.
A decent answer eventually self-coagulated: here we’re able focus on building something special, avoid distractions, and enjoy a high quality of life. And in many ways this city itself is a startup, and we’re proud to be a part of it.
Plus, we’ve been insulated from the madness and hysteria that has enveloped the ‘startup ecosystem’ during the past 4+ years.
Here, we’ve been lucky enough to find investors focused on investing in us as people, a team — rather than products or growth curves. In over 3 years we’ve had the opportunity to work on projects, fail, build teams, learn, and fail more.
Yet, that is only one side of the equation.The other reality is we’ve been largely isolated from much of the value the Valley has to offer.
frontstory
During our trip to 500 Startup’s #unSexy conference last week, in roughly 50 hours we were able to spend time inside Google and Microsoft, have dinner with 500, YC, & TechStars founders, share drinks with people fighting the same battles we are, and have conversations with dozens of founders,partners, and investors focused on our space who took an interest in our business. Needless to say, the feedback alone was worth the trip.
The reality is: friction is invaluable. And that level of highly-focused friction only exists one place in the world: Silicon Valley.
For thousands of years, we’ve defeated isolation by building bridges. 20 years ago, we believed we had created the ultimate bridge: the internet. And in many ways we have.
However, as we learned last week, physical friction — meeting face to face, telling a story, and listening — is something maybe impossible to replicate.
At Ambition, we’re ready to build bridges. Create a convergence of our product and business focus and the ability to have the greatest friction available. Not to ruin our insulation, but to defeat our isolation.
For other founders, we have this advice: Don’t be afraid to build your company where ever you want or where ever you feel you can thrive. The tools of the trade are readily available.
But when you’re ready, build bridges.
