BBC -- Is Seattle the next Silicon Valley? (Startup: 2013, crime)

[usernametaken]

BBC News - Is Seattle the next Silicon Valley?

BBC News - Next Silicon Valleys: Seattle lures in a new generation

[beautifulseattlehomes]

I watched this and it was favorable until the end when it contends that most people in the IT industry here are happy to be workers and lack the entrepreneurial drive of the Silicon Valley to start something new and different. Funding sources and lack there of were also touched on. He ends the piece by saying it will take decades to catch up with the SV.

I wonder what others thoughts are about the above and whether they agree...

It is part of a series looking at places all over the world as the next potential Silicon Valley...I watched Tel Aviv before finding the Seattle link.

[Ira500]

There's a mistake in the BBC piece that bothers Mr. OCD here. The reporter mentions that to get to nearby Microsoft from Seattle, you just cross the river.
If you can't correctly identify the body of water , it undermines the credibility of the whole piece.

[Hemlock140]

If they are looking for the next Silicone Valley, there really isn't another place with as much high tech as Seattle/eastside, but I don't think it will ever become the same, and in fact I hope not. We have more diversity in the economy here with manufacturing such as Boeing and Paccar, Vigor shipyard, the fishing industry, and biotech.

[Steve Bowen]

No, it's not. San Francisco is the new Silicon Valley. Tech firms are actually re-locating from Silicon Valley to SF in significant numbers. That's not true of Seattle, which is not even one of the top three metro areas for venture capital investment in the U.S.

Silicon Valley tech firms flock to San Francisco - San Francisco Business Times

Why San Francisco May Be the New Silicon Valley - Richard Florida - The Atlantic Cities

[Hemlock140]

I would consider SF to be an expansion of Silicone Valley, rather than a second one. It's simply spilling over as the south bay and peninsula run out of room, and the crime in San Jose gets worse than SF.

[Steve Bowen]

Originally Posted by Hemlock140

I would consider SF to be an expansion of Silicone Valley, rather than a second one. It's simply spilling over as the south bay and peninsula run out of room, and the crime in San Jose gets worse than SF.

I suppose it's a matter of semantics, but I think it's worth noting that when San Francisco and the East Bay are broken out separately from the South Bay, they have nearly twice the per capita venture capital investment of "Silicon Valley"

Where's Seattle in the list? Seventh, behind San Diego. Seattle is not the new Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley is increasingly not Silicon Valley.

And as an aside, I wonder how high-tech firms relocating from elsewhere in the Bay Area to San Francisco will impact cities trying to anoint themselves as "The Silicon Valley of X" in usually doomed economic (re-) development efforts.

[jaboyd1]

Originally Posted by Steve Bowen

I suppose it's a matter of semantics, but I think it's worth noting that when San Francisco and the East Bay are broken out separately from the South Bay, they have nearly twice the per capita venture capital investment of "Silicon Valley"

Where's Seattle in the list? Seventh, behind San Diego. Seattle is not the new Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley is increasingly not Silicon Valley.

And as an aside, I wonder how high-tech firms relocating from elsewhere in the Bay Area to San Francisco will impact cities trying to anoint themselves as "The Silicon Valley of X" in usually doomed economic (re-) development efforts.

That's a pretty narrow view of it though. You can't ignore the fact that companies like Amazon and Microsoft call the area home. The economic impact of those companies on the area make all those venture capital numbers look like a drop in the bucket. Places like San Diego, Austin, and Boulder have nothing on those. It also ignores the presence of other companies that have come for the wealth of software talent in the Seattle area. Seattle is home to Facebook's second largest engineering office, Google's third largest (likely to become second largest once the recently announced expansions are complete), and what is supposed to become Twitter's second largest engineering office. Startups are the hot ticket item right now, so everyone seems to be giving the scene a disproportionate amount of attention and weight. Everybody is focused on finding the next Amazon, Microsoft, or Facebook. Well, they're already here. Seattle may not have the sex appeal of the Silicon Valley in the eyes of venture capitalists, but big picture, the area makes a very strong argument for the second spot in the US.

[Steve Bowen]

Originally Posted by jaboyd1

That's a pretty narrow view of it though. You can't ignore the fact that companies like Amazon and Microsoft call the area home. The economic impact of those companies on the area make all those venture capital numbers look like a drop in the bucket. Places like San Diego, Austin, and Boulder have nothing on those. It also ignores the presence of other companies that have come for the wealth of software talent in the Seattle area. Seattle is home to Facebook's second largest engineering office, Google's third largest (likely to become second largest once the recently announced expansions are complete), and what is supposed to become Twitter's second largest engineering office. Startups are the hot ticket item right now, so everyone seems to be giving the scene a disproportionate amount of attention and weight. Everybody is focused on finding the next Amazon, Microsoft, or Facebook. Well, they're already here. Seattle may not have the sex appeal of the Silicon Valley in the eyes of venture capitalists, but big picture, the area makes a very strong argument for the second spot in the US.

That's a fair point. I do think that the gap between the Bay Area and Seattle will widen rather than narrow in coming years. Microsoft was founded in the late 70's and Amazon was founded in the mid-1990's. Seattle's largest tech companies are, by industry standards, mature and established and while that doesn't mean they can't grow (Amazon is growing like crazy as it diversifies), I think Seattle's prominence in the tech industry is largely a legacy thing.

I don't have stats handy right now, but I'd wager that the number of tech startups per-capita in the Bay Area is considerably higher than in the Seattle metro area. Combined with the fact that SF is now THE place for tech startups to locate, the better access to venture capital, and the spillover from the presence of the largest and most successful tech companies of the past decade (Facebook, Google, Twitter) and it adds up to an even deeper, and more rapidly clustering Bay Area tech sector.

[kyled]

If you type in new silicon valley into Google you'll get a dozen candidates ranging from the east coast to the west coast and everything in between...I think it's safe to say tech companies are popping up all over the place and moving everywhere...I don't any one area is emerging as "the next silicon valley"...if anything I think it just proves a center hub of tech is dissolving and opting to be more decentralized.