I called Seattle a “third tier startup city” in a blog post earlier this week.
Which generated this series of tweets:
1/ @fredwilson thesis: start up “second tier is NYC, LA and Boston…. third tier includes Seattle…” https://t.co/0TUhtAHdsf Really?
— Tren Griffin (@trengriffin) June 7, 2016
@fredwilson 2/ NY has: “Take-Two $3B, Etsy ~$1B, Kickstarter < $1B, OnDeck ~$500M. First $1B acquisition ever was in 2013: Tumblr.”
— Tren Griffin (@trengriffin) June 7, 2016
@fredwilson 3/ Zillow alone is $4.5B. Tableau $4B, CNQR ($5B), FFIV ($7B). MSFT ($410B), AMZN ($342). NILE, RNWK, ISLN., Zuilly, Expedia
— Tren Griffin (@trengriffin) June 7, 2016
After reading them, I thought “geez, I really screwed that up” and replied with this series of tweets:
@bgurley @trengriffin You both make great points about Seattle. I wasn’t trying to diss anyone with my post but clearly did.
— Fred Wilson (@fredwilson) June 7, 2016
@bgurley @trengriffin When you look at # of startups, VC dollars invested, etc Seattle doesn’t show up near the top
— Fred Wilson (@fredwilson) June 7, 2016
@bgurley @trengriffin but the outcomes are clearly top tier, better than LA or NYC, at least historically.
— Fred Wilson (@fredwilson) June 7, 2016
@bgurley @trengriffin so that tells me that something is really quite special about Seattle. But you knew that and I’m just realizing it
— Fred Wilson (@fredwilson) June 7, 2016
Here’s the thing that is amazing about Seattle. It doesn’t rank as high as NYC, LA, or Boston in the number of startups funded or capital invested. Here are the NVCA numbers for the first three quarters of 2015:
But the companies that have come out of Seattle over the past thirty years put NYC and LA and probably even Boston to shame. So on a dollars in/dollars in, Seattle outperforms. By a lot.
