Seattle’s startup scene has the talent and the capabilities. What it’s short on is a culture of risk-taking and the support systems for the people willing to make the leap.
Those were recurring themes from a cross-section of the city’s tech community at a World Cup watch party on the GeekWire deck on Tuesday. For this summertime installment of our occasional Geek on the Street feature, asked attendees to finish this sentence: “Our startup ecosystem would be better if …”
Keep reading for answers, which have been edited for brevity and clarity.
Our startup ecosystem would be better if … “we had more resources for early-stage founders,” said Jen Haller, partner and chief of staff at Ascend, which backs early-stage founders building venture-scale companies. She noted that the community needs more “opportunities for them to learn how to build, to set up the structure of their company, to raise money.”
While there are many resources for startups, even very early ones, the city has a blind spot when it comes to supporting and providing development pipelines for less experienced founders.
She said the region also lacks ways to fund good companies that aren’t on a venture-scale path, the ones that won’t deliver the outsized returns that VCs chase.
“There are a lot of amazing companies being built that aren’t traditionally VC-investable,” she said. “We’re really missing ways to fund those founders and those ideas.”
Our startup ecosystem would be better if … “people took more risks,” said Matthew Barclay, a veteran of Google and Microsoft who is now co-founder at a stealth AI company. “That goes for the investors in this ecosystem.”
Seattle has a reputation for favoring safe bets, although Barclay cited some local…
