Every Major web company started… Local

Here was a great discussion that I read on the OKDork.com blog. It is about starting locally versus national. This has direct relevance to the iRent2u launch.

There is one point I want to make in response to the views below. There are comments pointing to the fact that many of these companies came out of tech friendly areas, but I think a point they are missing is that these are also capital rich areas, meaning they have lot of investment money. I also think this has great impact on the success of these companies.

Post Found here:

http://okdork.com/2007/06/05/every-major-web-company-started/

Post Starts here:

Every Major web company started… Local. Think about it?

* Myspace started with parties in Los Angeles.

* Google had the tech geeks from the Valley all over it.

* Facebook was Harvard.

* Wordpress was Texas.

Now when you think oh man we should start nationally, think twice.

Any other examples?

* This is especially when you have limited funds. If youridea has real legs it will grow based on being successful locally and will make it easier for you to raise additional funds if needed. Get on base and grow.

* The majority of artists on http://www.indiefy.com are local. Would I like to have national exposure?…yes, but you can’t beat face-to-face communication with bands in the area. 80% of the artists signed up because of a local referral by a friend.

* Don’t forget AOL was all over Dulles, Virginia (I know, where the hell is that right?)

* Yahoo was StanfordCraigslist, eBay and Yelp were SF

Napster was Northeastern U.

Digg, Friendster, and Meebo had the tech geeks from the Valley all over it.

Skype had the oversee asians all over it.

I think all of them have two things in common–Geeks and Hipsters/Trend Setters

Any idea how YouTube got started?

* I think where is got started is not same thing as the target market.
“Start nationally” sounds like you are talking about launching nationwide.

The real point is don’t go nationwide (ads? Marketing..ect) if your
best friends and family can not even use the services. Successful
companies are started to fill a local need i.e without greed of taking
over the world.

* 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.

* 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.

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

* So is it just really hard to start a LOCAL tech company outside of SFI 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.

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