Startup City: The Urban Shift in Venture Capital and High Technology

This report seems to align with what I'm seeing here in DC.

Startup City: The Urban Shift in Venture Capital and High Technology - Martin Prosperity Institute

The key findings are as follows. 

Bay Area still on top: As a whole the San Francisco Bay Area — which includes greater San Francisco and Silicon Valley — accounted for more than 4 in 10 of all venture capital dollars invested across the entire United States. 

The city of San Francisco leads the way: San Francisco proper now attracts a larger volume of venture capital investment than Silicon Valley. East Coast Acela Corridor ranks 2nd: The Boston-New York-Washington corridor on the East Coast has emerged as the second major center for venture capital investment. 

New York City is a rising startup hub: Metro New York is now the nation’s third largest center for venture capital. Nearly 80 percent of the metro’s venture investment was invested in the city itself. 

College towns attracting venture capital too: College town tech hubs like Austin and Raleigh-Cary in the North Carolina Research Triangle have long been magnets for venture capital, but Boulder, Ann Arbor, and Lawrence, Kansas attract considerable venture capital on a per capita basis as well.  

Talent matters: Venture investment tracks the geography of talent, especially the percentage of adults who are college grads and the creative class. Eds and meds don’t matter for tech: While many states and cities have pinned their hopes on education and medical centers, our research finds little to no significant statistical associations between eds and meds employment and venture capital. 

Tolerance does matter: We find venture capital investment to be associated with several markers of the diversity of metros, including their shares of immigrants and gays.

Honeycomb Consulting Covered in Washington Post

So...I'd like to brag a little bit. LOL.

I was asked to appear on a panel for DC Entrepreneur Week. The topic was on branding and marketing a startup, something that I love to talk about. The other panelists were super engaging and intelligent, so it was a great discussion. Anyway, the Washington Post wrote a short overview of the event, with a quote from yours truly.

Read it here: 5 take-aways from DC Entrepreneurship Week’s panel on “Creating a Loyal Brand”

Interview with Kristin Bockius, Microsoft’s State and Local Government Relationship Manager

Originally posted on MicrosoftPartnerNews.com...

The Worldwide Partner Conference is hopping down here at the Washington Convention Center. The energy level is high as 14,000 attendees network with each other and learn about the latest Microsoft software and services. One attendee I had a conversation with was Kristin Bockius. She works in the Public Sector group at Microsoft and leads their efforts to build relationships with state and local government clients and partners that service them. She is is an thought leader in how to utilize social media marketing techniques. Here is a few snippets of our conversation:

Why are you here at WPC?

I’m here mainly to connect with partners that sell to state and local governments or have an interest in tapping into this huge marketplace. I’m particularly keen on showing how they can use effective social media marketing campaigns to grow sales and strengthen client relationships. For example, if a partner isn’t using any social media tools now, they can still work with us to leverage the social media properties Microsoft has already built, like www.gov2social.com, and www.brightsidegovernment.com, and twitter.com/microsoft_gov.

Can you share some examples?

Sure. Infostrat is an IT consulting company and Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. I recently sat down with them for a social media consult. They were very interested on how to leverage social media in a business to business (B2B) and a business to government (B2G) situation. I shared a set of best practices that we’ve developed at Microsoft and now they are going to be launching a new marketing initiative with social media at its core.

Another company is SpeakTECH. They already have embraced the benefits of social media marketing as cost effective way to reach to prospects and customers. The challenge is here is how do we at Microsoft co-mingle our social media marketing activies with theirs in a way that effectively but appropriately drives new sales.

Lastly, I’m also going to be talking with Zones about how they can expand their already successful business into the sometimes hard to penetrate state and local government marketplace.

This is your first time at WPC. What do you think so far?

I’m psyched to be here. For one, I love DC! Plus, compared to other trade shows, everyone here is really engaged and enthusiastic.

There was a very interesting webinar this morning organized by Washington Technology magazine and featuring Ray Bjorkland of FedSources.

Here is couple of tidbits I found interesting:

• there will be fewer government opportunities over the next few years but those that exist will be bigger
• it is increasingly important to get on an IDIQ contract or get on an existing team
• pure A-76 contracts will be rare, but mostly used for small scale staff augmentation deals
• the impact of the 2008 election will be minimal until the 2009 budget due to the length of the government budgeting cycle (well....duh)
• eGov initiatives seem to have broad based bi-partisan support and won't see much change over the next few years
• IPv6 is not a high risk change for government, but poses a huge managerial and cultural challenge. Will the government develop and implement a viable plan for all the ancillary changes that need to be addressed? Still up the in air.
• there a strong resurgence of interest and budgets in health IT. Electronic health records are driving budget growth as well as funds to directly support warfighter and veterans
• there will be increasing collaboration among government agencies, ie IWIN with DOJ/DHS. However, in the end, most contracts of this sort tend to get driven by one or another of the agencies involved.