Will High Profile Internet Entrepreneurs Venture Outside The Valley? at Outside the Valley

« Feedtwister - Argentina | Home | How To Compete With The Valley: Step 1 - Stop The Brain Drain »

Will High Profile Internet Entrepreneurs Venture Outside The Valley?

By Adam | June 11, 2007

Rob recently covered Mahalo, the new brainchild of infamous Valley entrepreneur Jason Calacanis. While the startup has garnered a lot of attention for their interesting approach to search, another notable aspect of the company is its home base of Santa Monica. In a recent interview with Wired News, Calacanis expressed his reasoning for launching Mahalo in Santa Monica:

Wired News: You’re based in Santa Monica, far away from Silicon Valley. Should tech startups stay away from Silicon Valley and the Bay Area?

Jason Calacanis: I think the Bay Area is great if you need to get a profile going. However, if you have a profile already, you can draw talent to your operation. For me it’s so much easier running the company in Santa Monica, where I’m not battling with 1,000+ Web 2.0 startups for every PHP developer within 100 miles of Union Square.

Interesting. Though Mahalo is still relatively close to the Valley, the fact that an internet all-star like Calacanis is noticing the value of setting up shop outside of the California tech heartland could be a prelude to the future geographic strategy of other startups. Does this mean that high profile internet entrepreneurs will begin venturing from the valley?

Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.