Comments on: Every Major web company started…

By: Piaras M

Piaras M — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 16:02:13 +0000

One of the first and greatest communitry based sites that I became involved with was Chowhounds. This was and is a great site due to its independant content and the voyeristic aspect of being able to see where other animals come to graze. I love to see what other people are eating and the sense of community is really cool too.

Hey Noah, here is an oldschool entry for a SF Bay area Burrito Tour. I know you love your Burrito’s.

http://www.chowhound.com/topics/17286?query=burritos

Back to the topic at hand. I think that one of the reasons that this site works is that even though it is a national site, it can be broken down regionally to pinpoint relevant information specific to your own demographic. This gives it a more grass roots and community based feel.

I may be off here but , for me, this site sticks in my concience and I often recommend it to others.

By: Noah Kagan

Noah Kagan — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 17:05:44 +0000

I also realized Plaxo started at Sand Hill Road and LinkedIn started with the tech valley.

By: Deron

Deron — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 12:57:21 +0000

Interesting! Gives hope to the rest of us who don’t have thousands to pump into a new start up. Thanks for sharing.

By: Damon Billian

Damon Billian — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 09:15:02 +0000

I know that some of the PayPal folks think the next huge company will come from the Palo Alto/Mountain View area (they used statistics, of course).

Pretty much all of the companies mentioned in the post started in tech-friendly areas, even if all of them weren’t started in California.

By: Jason H.

Jason H. — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 06:35:20 +0000

Noah,

It’s funny you said that MySpace created the shittiest product. When u really think about it, it’s probably the only one of the more successful web2.0 companies that were spread by the non-geeks and non-ivy-leaguers! I wonder if there is a correlation???

By: Patrick

Patrick — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 03:49:45 +0000

I guess it is really hard to start a LOCAL tech company outside of SF.

By: Noah Kagan

Noah Kagan — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 00:13:03 +0000

Jason,

Great way to think about it. I am not sure off the top of my head. I think fundamentally you create an amazing product. On the other hand with MySpace maybe you create the shittiest product you can think of:)

By: Noah Kagan

Noah Kagan — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 00:11:06 +0000

How’s your site doing Charles?

Rik,

Good point on Starbucks with their Seattle roots. I doubt they would have done as well starting in Wyoming.

By: Charles

Charles — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 22:46:14 +0000

I can relate to this. I started a small social networking site and tried to go national from day one. It wasn’t until I realized that half of my users were Stanford grads from the Bay Area that I stopped focusing on national reach and focused instead on going deeper in the region where my users already seemed to be.

I think the reason is simple — it’s a lot easier to get word of mouth to happen in a geographically dense area. It’s also easier to understand how those in your home geo behave.

By: Rik

Rik — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 22:28:32 +0000

If you think of it, it’s not weird that things happen like that: most of these companies got their momentum from word-of-mouth, which is a local phenomenon. Although it has a scaling advantage, in the beginning web works the same as brick&mortar companies like starbucks did; you need to build a critical mass, which is easiest done locally.