In my quest to find the coolest technology companies and products, I've just landed in Austin, Texas, after holding a meetup for entrepreneurs in Seattle.
We had 200 people show up for the party at the Crocodile Club in Seattle. The entrepreneurs there are getting more creative. They're scrappier, many of them looking for angel funding to finance their companies for a longer time at a lower burn rate. Many of them are bypassing venture capital altogether -- often because they're forced to.
But then others are moving to Silicon Valley. I met two entrepreneurs last night who have already bought their tickets. In fact, the place is abuzz with people fretting over whether Seattle can hold its own against the Valley's vacuuming force. The reason: All of the publicity lately about the humungous valuations that Silicon Valley's venture capitalists are offering to companies they invest in. Twitter, Zynga, and even Groupon -- a Chicago-based company which gave in and opened two Valley beachheads this week -- are all recent examples of companies getting massive amounts of fundings at high valuations.
Even foreign investors like DST swoop in to the Valley to do deals and enjoy syndicating with local investors to invest in companies like Groupon, and work with local law firms. And of course there's the peppy new generation of companies like Square, Blippy and Quora, three early, pre-revenue valley companies that got funding easily and at sometimes lofty valuations.
The fretting in Seattle is just that. What Groupon in Chicago and Foursquare, the hot location-based service headquartered in New York, have shown is that if you've got the goods, it doesn't really matter where you're based. You'll just want to be ready to get on a plane ride to San Francisco occasionally.
Earlier in the day yesterday, we invited some of the coolest companies to pitch at Madrona Ventures, one of the more respected firms in Seattle, and I expect to see several of them launch at DEMO this fall in Silicon Valley.
Pictured top left is one of entrepreneurs I met in Seattle, who typifies this set. Mike Draghici has a team of seven, some of whom he met through the University of Washington. They've built a device that looks like a small iPad that uses GPS to provide a more efficient taxi-dispatching service. It includes routing and payment functions and allows mobile access from a smartphone. It's a cool idea. They've got pilot tests with a couple of local cab companies, and yet they've bootstrapped this all the way. He's looking for angel, and I'm pretty sure he's going to pull it off one way or another.
Now I'm off to Texas's startup hub, where Austin Ventures is hosting the 10-company pitch event Thursday. We've also invited Martin Neath of Adams Capital, Sam Decker and Josh Baer of Capital Factory, Rudy Garza of G51, and Morgan Flager of Silverton to a reception there.
Then we all head over to the party afterward, at the roof of Speakeasy. If you're an entrepreneur or someone else interested in tech products, and you're here in central Texas, there's still room at the party -- swing on by! Just register here.
Thanks to John Cook of Seattle's TechFlash for helping get the word out about the event, as well as Tim Reha, of New Media Synergy, whose team helped with video and much more.
Pictures from Seattle (by Stephen Brashear):
