Nothing like a mention of the “Seattle Freeze” to heat up the conversation about the city’s startup ecosystem and what works and what doesn’t.
Seattle’s long-dreaded social dynamic surfaced at the WTIA’s FullConTech conference Tuesday, evoked as one reason why some founders have a tough time getting started or attracting investors.
“It’s that passive-aggressiveness — it’s cool to be pessimistic, it’s cool to not try too hard,” said Yifan Zhang, managing director at the AI2 Incubator. “That is not good when you’re trying to create things that never existed before.”
The reaction to comments by Zhang and others, and GeekWire’s post, drew out a few heavy hitters on LinkedIn, some of whom said the startup community would be better served by focusing on building groundbreaking startups.
- “I hated this post,” said Aviel Ginzburg, the entrepreneur, investor and Techstars Seattle vet who is launching Seattle Foundations as another avenue to assist tech founders in the city. “We have to stop whining and start doing. … Find a problem. Attack it. Fail or don’t fail. Who cares.”
- Ascend VC founder Kirby Winfield concurred, as did Erik Benson, managing director at Voyager Capital, who wrote that in 25+ years of doing venture in Seattle, he has “never seen the Seattle Freeze.”
- “The article I wrote for GeekWire 13 years ago still holds true, or maybe is true again. That’s a bit sad,” said entrepreneur Kirill Zubovsky, referencing his 2011 guest post about what he encountered after moving to Seattle to build a startup. Yes, it’s harder in Seattle for a variety of reasons, Zubovsky wrote at the time, but shutting up about it and doing the hard work can level the playing field.
Over on GeekWire’s Slack, we ping-ponged the topic back and forth for a bit Wednesday morning, debating the Freeze, Seattle’s inferiority complex compared to Silicon Valley, and more.
- I couldn’t help but surface a quote from a recent story I did on Seattle native Avi Schiffmann’s new startup, in which he discussed the ease of working and raising money in San Francisco. “The great part about San Francisco is that all the capital is here, and all the founders are here, and all the potential hires, engineering wise, are here. I raised all the money for this in a hoodie with no business plan and no pitch deck, just … vibes,” Schiffmann said.
- “I am tired of the meme,” said GeekWire co-founder John Cook, asking why Seattle’s startup ecosystem always seems to be placed in comparison to San Francisco. “I just bet there are 20 or 50 or 100 founders in Seattle who are scrapping and clawing right now who may not be getting attention (including from us) who run counter to this narrative.” Cook pointed to the history of groundbreaking companies started in Seattle that solved hard problems, weathering ups and downs rather than simply chasing a hot trend.