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Of course, entrepreneurs in every city consider their own community a “startup hub,” but what does that really mean? At Startup Phenomenon last week, entrepreneurs from around the world pitched their city’s startup culture in five-minute presentations each, shedding light on why some startup “hubs” are more successful than others.
Quick Left CEO represented Boulder in the panel alongside several other leaders who stepped up to give each other insight to startup cultures around the world. Here are a few that you can learn from right now:
Auckland, New Zealand’s geographic isolation can be a challenge, said Claudia Batten, board member of ICEHOUSE and cofounder of Massive Inc. & Victors & Spoils. But despite problems of finding talent and investors, Claudia noted that Auckland is expected to churn out over 3,000 new startup companies by 2020.
Edmonton, Canada is a unique entrepreneurial community made up mostly of hackers and artists according to Ken Bautisita, cofounder of Startup Edmonton. Also unique to Edmonton is exchange of tech student talent across local universities (typically this is only cross-departmental across campus), something that Bautista said he has taken advantage of as founder of Hotrocket Studios and Rocketfuel Games.
Louisvile, Kentucky logistically is a good match for startups: it is centrally-located and is the nation’s 29th largest city. But Tendai Charasikia, executive director of EnterpriseCorp division of Greater Louisville Inc. and a Lean Startup consultant, said that the city still struggles with the city’s startup culture and reinvestment of capital back into the community. To cope, Louisville entrepreneurs are “building a pipeline of resources” to engage the whole community, including the city’s large corporate population.
Cambridge, England places as the top startup city worldwide. Alan Barrell, Entrepreneur in Residence at University of Cambridge said that Cambridge is the place where “imagination is more important than knowledge” and where “’Why not?’ people outweigh ‘yes’ people.” Cambridge’s famous SiliconFen district provides over 55,000 startup jobs in a wide range of sectors including nano, bio and info technology companies.
Shanghai, China’s startup growth is being helped along by China’s government as a way to decrease the country’s unemployment rates, said Kelly Lu, managing director at Kelly Placement and CEO at CareerFrog. These efforts are helping to supply over 90,000 startup jobs to the economy and then keep those jobs intact; China has one of the highest startup survival rates.
And the one commonality across the world? Collaboration.