Does anybody have a theory as to why Seattle's startup ecosystem is so bad compared to all of its other metrics?
I moved here a few years ago and it feels like the culture nudges people away from defining their life based on their work (compared to SF/NYC at least), but that feels like a generally handy-wavy explanation. Presumably there's enough MS + Amazon money floating around to get a decent angel/venture scene started.
It's because WA allows for non-compete agreements for employees above a certain income level, whereas CA bans non-competes outright. So it's much more difficult to get top/high-ranking people to leave MS/AMZN since they might get sued by their employer.
Note that the threshold in WA is around $116K annual salary and I imagine that most senior tech employees would be above this level.
And this is precisely why the law is so toothless in WA. It was intended to kill non-competes for low-wage workers (McDonald's workers, etc), not for tech workers. That's still a good thing overall, but techies don't really see the benefits of it.
Because given a choice, no one would want to do a startup in Seattle.
Seattle is a city of transplants who are only there because Amazon/MSFT brought them there.
It is a city that is enjoyed on a big tech lifestyle. Weekend get aways are amazing. The suburbs are nice as far as suburbs go. So the demographics that love seattle and ones that do startups are diametrically opposed to each other.
The city of Seattle itself lacks charm and appeal. The Scandinavian coldness merged with tech introversion makes it the loneliest tech city. Among tech cities, it has the worst weather (if I'm indoors all day, I want sun at will when I do go out).
I have lived in SF, Seattle, Boston and NYC. Seattle is easily the least "city" of the lot.
That being said, those same
traits make Seattle an amazing 2nd location for a startup.
It's really funny to read your comment as I take a break from my job working for a startup in Seattle, a city I love for its charm, friendliness, and comfortable weather!
Some of it is that H1-Bs can’t be founders and startups usually can’t secure visas, and Seattle is a smaller population overall with fewer developers coming from the metro area. The Bay Area and NY have some of the best STEM schools in the world right next door, all western Washington has is a pretty good public university (UW) with a CS program that’s been largely irrelevant to the tech scene until fairly recently.
I’ve gotten to know many talented non-us devs while working in enterprise but I can’t do a startup with them, couldn’t even hire them.
Their visa makes them indentured servants who will be deported if they’re doing anything other than working at a big company for the next 4-10 years. This exists in every city that’s big in tech, but in Seattle it’s a quantitative difference that becomes a qualitative difference. I’ve worked with at least a hundred developers in Seattle over the last decade and only three of them were from the region or attended undergrad here.
There's a good contingent of YC folks in Capitol Hill. I'm very interested in improving the Seattle startup scene and would love to grab a coffee or chat.
I moved here a few years ago and it feels like the culture nudges people away from defining their life based on their work (compared to SF/NYC at least), but that feels like a generally handy-wavy explanation. Presumably there's enough MS + Amazon money floating around to get a decent angel/venture scene started.