I got several emails after Seedcamp Ljubljana from entrepreneurs who were looking for advice and mentoring. Apart from direct advice, the most common question was “where can I get mentorship and advice in my home town?”
I copy pasted this 3 times, and I think it’s a great, if not the only real way to get things kicking off if your local startup scene is lame:
- I’d check local meetups, open coffee, hackernews meetings, conferences, meet other entrepreneurs and founders, hackers, and bloggers.
- If that doesn’t exist – build it yourself, get some entrepreneurs together, start a movement, share insights, tips, learnings, travel to places (some slovenians did a cool trip to the silicon valley with 20 people and crashed startup parties), everything else you can think of.
- Check out university programs, talk to professors, students, guest lecturers, researchers, they often have insights of what is going on. Throw a local event to get cool founders from other places to your town
- The upside: If you can make yourself the leader of that movement, you will open lots of doors, meet investors, and other, travelling entrepreneurs that come to your area. You are now the boss of your new, cool, local startup scene.
I am sure you have more ideas than I have. All in all, this should only take about 5-10 years.
Update from the comments: I still think that travelling to technology hubs, conferences, and meetups in other places is crucial to build your personal and professional network. If you are in Europe, you should go and spend a week in London, Berlin or Paris every now and then to be part of what’s going on there. The energy and connections are hard to beat.
Well, locally to me there’s quite a lot of small businesses, but I don’t if you’d call it a start-up scene. There’s the village shop, a bunch of farms, a domestic heating oil supplier and two mechanics 😀
I think I’ll stick to traveling to London…
Get them online 🙂
I was referring more to places that are somewhat metropolitan, but not there yet in terms of tech and startup scene. In most places with more than 100K inhabitants, you’d be surprised at the number of hackers and startups.
Seems like it boils down to 1) suck it up, 2) build it yourself (while you’re building your startup), and 3) go on boondoggles to startup hubs where you can waste time sucking up to startup celebrities?  😉
No wonder startup ecosystems are hard to generate! Â This is a “cold start” problem worse than online communities. Â I think we need a Quora/Sprouter/Google Huddle/Meetup mashup for entrepreneurs out in the boondocks.
Well, get the mechanics to code 🙂
This applies more to larger cities with a bit of a nascent or sleeping scene – I still think that travelling to technology hubs, conferences, and meetups in other places is crucial to build your personal and professional network. If you are in Europe, you should go and spend a week in London, Berlin or Paris every now and then to be part of what’s going on there. The energy and connections are hard to beat.Â
Most of the teams at Seedcamp were from Southeast Europe, and I’d say the startup scene here is small but dynamic and growing. Ljubljana, Zagreb & Belgrade all have regular meetings, conferences, events of one sort or another. If the people who asked were from Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia I’m sure they will have no problem getting connected and in touch – perhaps it’s an issue of more effort on their part.
Perhaps I’m stating the obvious, but anyone who was at Seedcamp (especially those who were there for the first time) has benefited massively from getting plugged into one of the best startup networks certainly in Europe, if not globally and not leveraging that to the max is a mistake that can be only their own fault.
As a very simple first followup step – dude, if you haven’t already, go and join the Facebook group “Mini Seedcamp Ljubljana” http://www.facebook.com/groups/205823522802657
Absolutely agree – this wasn’t meant so much for those teams at Seedcamp, much more about teams that applied from more far away areas and are trying to see how they can meet the right people to get advice, have some peers to chat to, etc. After all, not everybody can or should move to a hub.Â
Pretty much. And yes, it’s hard, and I don’t think that massive hubs or anything like that will evolve out of such a strategy. However, having a strong local scene is just so important as it gives support and heightens chances of success for everyone.
So we agree… that’s nice! 🙂 🙂