In an upcoming series spanning both coasts, Russell Jurney will explore startup geography — the importance and effect of physical location on technology startups. TechDrawl is flying him business class on AirTran round-trip to San Francisco, supplying him with a sleek Flip Mino HD camcorder, and will be raising additional support for his travels by auctioning a pair of AirTran business class domestic passes on eBay and generally hitting-up and guilt-tripping our personal contacts for cash donations via Twitpay to cover his week of expenses. We will create a visualization page for donors to said fund. (Details to follow in a separate post). AirTran delivers the “best flying experience to smart travelers” and has 270 of its 750 daily departures leaving the ATL via Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (its primary hub).
Jurney will try to quantify the ‘Valley Advantage.’ Tooling around Silicon Valley on a tractor (if they’ll rent him one at Dahl’s in the Valley), he will focus on several aspects of startup geography, including personal experiences of founders of both successful and unsuccessful startups and how their physical location influenced their startup’s trajectory. He will examine the importance of physical proximity in a social networked and internet collaborative world and try to answer the question, “How much does social networking make up for physical separation in developing a new venture and building a startup ecosystem?” Finally, he will examine regional specialization in technology startups and explore the question, “How important is it that the market your startup pursues is well suited to your physical location, and what kinds of products and markets are suited to different regions?”
Jurney is a technologist and a compulsive, degenerate technology entrepreneur who is writing his next business plan by creating this series of articles. You can read more about him on Cloudstenography and follow his journey to Silicon Valley on Twitter and on TechDrawl.
[Photo: Kate Jurney]
