West Coast vs. East Coast — West is drubbing East, in modesty too

govworks.bmpHere’s another story (Mercury News) about the differences between the venture and start-up communities on the East and West coasts.

Separately, note that the most ridiculous examples of self-absorbtion do not necessarily hail from Silicon Valley, as some might assume.

payperpostvideo.bmpThe start-up that filmed itself during the boom era of 2000, Govworks.com (the company of Kaleil Tuzman’s, pictured top, which became the documentary Startup.com) was based in New York City. And this year’s self-absorbed company, PayPerPost, is based in Florida (we wrote about PayPerPost here). It has launched Rockstartup to video-chronicle its journey. It has the obligatory episode of the founder Ted Murphy in the car, before and after meeting with venture capitalists (click on image above for video). Of course, Murphy comes back after the meeting, boasting he’s raised $3 million in three meetings, and is going to make his partner so rich. Both PayPerPost and Govworks raised money from Silicon Valley VCs (Govworks raised $60M, including from Mayfield, PayPerPost from DFJ), so valley VCs are partly responsible for this sort of excess too. What do you think? Will PayPerPost bomb, like Govworks did? Techcrunch also takes note.

Also, not sure what the Mercury News meant by the East Coast having an advantage in biotech. There’s evidence that the Bay Area is ahead of the Boston area in this field too.

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Matt Marshall is editor and CEO of VentureBeat. Follow him on Twitter at @mmarshall, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

  • The correct link to the article on the differences is at Capital battle between the coasts.

    Matt, lately, you've been pointing to incorrect URLs in quite a few posts. What's going on? Stressed out? :)
  • Really, VentureBeat? You're now measuring "self-absorbtion [sic]" levels between the Coasts?

    I think the overwhelming feeling has been that NYC start-ups are pretty humble and chill. People like it here specifically because it doesn't have all the hype and tech-rock-star culture that the Valley has.

    Party on East Coasters!
  • Apologies, I've corrected the link. Stressed? Nah. Perhaps too self-absorbed. ;)
  • Andrew
    The BioTech comment might have been in reference to the DC area, with the FDA and other government agencies and all the Genome research being done along the I-270 corridor.
  • I saw this article as well. Living on the east coast I am always curious as the reasons for the differences in cultures in this arena. I wrote a small piece on this news as well @
    http://eastcoastblogging.com/blog/2006/12/11/wh...
  • Hey you can't mention RockStartUp without giving my parody a plug. Click my name above to watch it!!! Drop me an e-mail with your comments.
  • The debate should not be about east vs. west, but about Boston vs. Silicon Valley - these are the 2 most important start-up zones in the world. INcluding NYC and LA and Florida in the debate muddies the issue. As a veteran tech starup guy who has worked in both San Francisco and Boston, I can confidently say that the Sillicon Valley startups brag too much and worry too much about their image and not enough about revenue and profit. This produces some huge wins, but also a ton of magnificent failures. While the Sillicon Valley game is fun to watch, I much prefer the understated, modest, puritan spirit of New England which instills in our startups a need and desire to focus on business results rather than flair and self-promotion.
  • Puritan spirit? It's call puritan snobbery...Boston's issue is that the VC and management community has been stuck in the 90's allowing most tech innovation pass them by while looking down their noses at "web 2.0" technology until something (like YouTube) makes some waves in the pool.
  • Danny
    Let me see where to start. True facts are that the wealthiest cities are on the Weastcoast. Examples are San Jose, San Francisco, New Port Beach,,etc.
    Higher amount of College degrees are in San Francisco and Seattle area. Both were ranked as smart cities by CNNMoney.com
    Biotech and technology center(Sillicon Valley)are found in the Bay Area.Companies like google, Sun, Dell, HP,Oracle, Apple,etc.
    Boston doesn't have the best VC's, talent and schools.Stanford University and berkeley are in the Bay Area.
    I can actually say this are facts you can find on CNNMoney.com or in google.
  • nice site
  • mariah lopez
    yo WEST COAST 4 EVA I PREFER THE WEST COAST COZ THEY REAL OL DA WAY!!!!!!!!!! LUV 2 WEST COAST!!!!!!!
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