Another East Coast West Coast Thing
January 28, 2008 · Print This Article
I am always fascinated about the talk of the differing cultures between the east and west coast tech scenes. There are many posts about this phenomena. I saw one shared in Google Reader today, by the way the shared items in reader is awesome and I always get to read great stiff shared out by my friends. Anyway, today Andrew Wright pointing to an article in Valleywag which referenced a Forbes list of the tope venture capitalists.
According to the post, New York VC’s only made up 2% of the list. They had an interesting take on some reasons for this:
asked many VCs why East Coast investors don’t prosper to the same degree as those based here, and the answer is consistent: Back east, VCs are too focused on the downside, on squeezing something out of a startup that has failed, on turfing out entrepreneurs when a young company hits a bump in the road. In the balmy clime of northern California, venture capitalists are a sunnier lot: They’d rather have a small piece of a large pie, or so they claim.
So is it patience ? Is that the reason VC’s on the east coast do not fare as well as their west coats counterparts ? Maybe this is true. The east coast VC’s are obviously a bit more conservative with the $$ and maybe they do pull the string a little too early. Any thoughts on this out there ? Whats your take on the east vs west coast vc scene ?
I wouldn’t say this is a phenomenon solely related to VCs. I’ve witnessed similar differences apply to our military (during my time in the Navy) and in a corporate setting (at Titan, Inc.). There are definitely unique cultural traits on each coast which affect a company areas such as working atmosphere, marketing techniques and fiscal decisions. At the risk of sounding simple, the west coast is more laid back and willing to take bigger risks.
I have recently seen more East coast companies attempt and succeed in obtaining funding from West coast investors. That would be an interesting metric to obtain.