By Michelle Lang
Zipcar and its news of a $75 million IPO is a reminder to us Greater Boston folks to quit our whining.
We’re always complaining – er, conversing – about the Bay Area getting all our good ideas (i.e., Facebook), luring away startups and their innovative entrepreneurs to the West Coast, where they’ll find VC funding AND sunlight, to boot. We can’t compete with the latter, though our spring is putting up a good fight so far. But with the former, we may have an argument…at least with our potential U.S. locations that might be looking to take a good Yankee-bred idea.
Check out John Cook’s blog from Seattle TechFlash. Here’s an excerpt:
Zipcar’s $75 million IPO filing today is getting coverage in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg. But I look at the news as yet another example of a Seattle company that slipped away. Observers of Seattle startup history may recall that Cambridge-based Zipcar purchased its primary rival in 2007, a Seattle company called Flexcar that was started with support from King County in 2000 and later received backing from America Online co-founder Steve Case and former Chrysler Corp. Chief Executive Lee Iacocca.
After the merger, the company consolidated HQ operations in Massachusetts, adopted the Zipcar name and essentially took the lead in the car-sharing sector.
And that speaks to a larger issue, one I’ve often brought up here and addressed at events around town. Why aren’t swing-for-the-fences upstarts – the types of companies that file for $75 million IPOs – emerging in Seattle?
Cook highlights Zipcar’s $75 million IPO as a sign of Seattle’s predicament – good ideas selling out. “Swing-for-the-fences upstarts” – it’s flattering to think that Boston has that kind of entrepreneurial spirit. But true. When startups fail here, it may well be that they fell shy of the fences.
What I love about Cook’s blog though is the comments that follow. Take a look. “Victor” comments, “Hate to say it, this town is too “nice”, not enough primal greed, and certainly not enough killer instinct.” The comments then follow on this logic that Seattle may be too laid back. Makes me laugh – not to think of Seattle’s friendly environment being a hindrance to business, but to think that Boston’s unfriendliness may actually be an asset. Who would’ve thought that the guy/gal flipping you off as he/she cuts you off on the highway could be a top go-getting entrepreneur in the area. Next time you get the urge to return the favor on the roads, just wave and say thank you – that jerk is making Boston a better business town.
Posted by mlang
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[...] Two, stop claiming we don’t have retail-oriented online companies. Do we have a Google that started here? No. But where is Google’s second-largest engineering brain trust? Kendall Square. We’ve got a bunch of up-and-comers. Think: Harmonix, Zipcar, iRobot, Carbonite, even LogMeIn. And let’s not forget some other tech innovators that are still alive and kicking, from Monster Worldwide and Bose Corp. to a little one we’ve been writing about for years: Staples.com, which is second only to Amazon as the nation’s largest, Internet retailer. Granted, none of these is Facebook. I get it. But tech jobs are tech jobs and revenue is revenue, and every region in the U.S. (except one) wishes it had what Greater Boston has — including Seattle. [...]