I was having breakfast yesterday with Alexander Casassovici, a young entrepreneur from Paris, who was in Amsterdam for the Nextweb conference. Alexander’s startup Wavestorm develops technology for the “Internet of Things” — machine to machine communications via Wi-Fi. We were talking about how this tech “bubble” is different from the first one in the late 1990s in that there are a lot of European entrepreneurs who are NOT moving to Silicon Valley. Back in the 1990s, a lot of non-American startups felt they had to move. Not so today. I believe there are 2 reasons:
- the high cost of living and working in Silicon Valley;
- this is a different generation of entrepreneurs who prefer to live and work in places like Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, Hongkong.
Alexander told me he’d rather live in Asia than in Silicon Valley. I’ve met a lot of other people who spend months working in places like Buenos Aires. More exotic than the Valley.
Another big change is that you can get good programmers and web developers in Eastern Europe and Asia, so you don’t necessarily have to go to California.
If you want to follow European startups, go to Alarm: Clock Euro.
Hi Esme, Thanks for mentioning the alarm:clock euro. If you have any news or ideas for articles, please send them our way.
And good luck with Pajama Entrepreneur!
Apropos pajamas – yoga togs are a nice alternative. You can sign for registered mail at 10:30 in the morning and not be too embarassed