Funny thing happened last week.The post I wrote, NYC vs Silicon Valley, kinda blew up and set off wave of dicussion in the blogosphere. Silicon Alley Insider republished it and Chris Dixon, Caterina Fake, Roger Ehrenberg, and now ReadWriteWeb all responded. Some folks got pissed, but I think some productive conversations started as a result, and I'm proud of that.
But there's a little detail I wanted to clarify: that SAI Headline, yeah, I didn't write it.
My original headline: NYC vs Silicon Valley. Neutral. Reflective. Non-inflammatory.
SAI headline: Face It, New York Isn't the Best Place to be a Startup. Provocative. Inflammatory. Declarative.
Here's how it happened: On Thursday, I tweeted out "Working on Epic Blog Post RE: Silicon Valley vs NYC."
Nicholas Carlson of SAI @ tweeted me asking to tell him when I was finished with the post. Background: I previously had blogged for SAI and am on good terms with the crew over there. "I want to bait Chris Dixon," Nicholas told me via IM. Cool. Whatever. I stayed up until 4am writing the post and didn't think much of it. I figured he was gonna re-tweet the post and @cdixon it.
The next morning, Nicholas sent me an IM: "Check out SAI." And there was my post, with a new headline. No one had asked me directly if they could republish it.
Now, I say all this and want to make it clear that I don't begrudge Nicholas or SAI. I actually worked for them briefly as a blogger and am on great terms with Dan, Joe, and the rest of the team over there. But I do want to make it clear to those of you who might have seen that headline on SAI and think that I wrote it. A subtle difference, I know, but I just wanted to set the record straight.
Also, some of you, including now our friends at ReadWriteWeb, seem to develop the impresession that I am moving to Silicon Valley. As of today, this is not true. I am taking a 10 day trip to California––not moving there! Big difference. I MIGHT move there later and I'll definitely be thinking about it while I'm here, but it's far from a done deal.
Truth be told, my argument in that post is a working hypothesis. I think what I said is true, but I'm not 100%. And so I'm here in California to explore and figure things out.
Cheers from Palo Alto!
-Matt
