Geek on the Street in Seattle: ‘SF beats us because they invest off of vibes’

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 investors who are taking the kind of risks more common in the Bay Area, particularly on the pre-seed side. The problem, he said, is that too many of the bigger names stay reluctant to roll the dice, and too much of the engineering talent is content with comfortable big-tech salaries. 

“If there were more of a culture of taking risks here, you’d see that it would be the next level up,” he said. “We have the talent, the money is here, it’s just that risk-taking that I think is holding us back.”

Our startup ecosystem would be better if … people would “take more risks — be crazy,” said Emeka Alozie, a Seattle startup founder and mentor.

He wants to walk the city and feel that bold new companies are growing up around him, the way startups feel omnipresent in San Francisco. Seattle needs a visible culture of risk-taking, he said, and capital will follow. 

“The capital will come once it feels like this is the place where, holy smokes, how can the next innovation not happen here?” he said.

But that requires making the leap feel possible, especially when the corporate path still feels like the safer bet. 

“We need to create a safe space, a safe culture, a safe infrastructure, a safe climate to produce what is extraordinarily risky,” he said, “because it’s very safe to just get a job that pays you $200,000.”

Our startup ecosystem would be better if … “we had a truly centralized resource portal,” said Shannon Swift, founder and CEO of Swift HR Solutions, a human resources consulting firm.

Swift, who served as board member and chair of the Northwest Entrepreneur Network before it was acquired by the Washington Technology Industry Association in 2014, said the region once had organizations where founders knew exactly where to go for what they needed.

She said all the components of a startup ecosystem are here — the problem is that they’re not connected. The community would benefit from a single centralized hub to fill that gap again.

Our startup ecosystem would be better if … “people went off vibes,” said Jordan Baker, managing general partner at Athenaeum Ventures, a firm that focuses on identifying mispriced talent.

“I don’t want to see your pro forma. I don’t want to see a P&L,” he said. “I don’t want to see made-up numbers. I want to see an incredible founder with grit who’s going to bash their head against the wall every single day until success appears.”

Baker called it “blasphemous” to expect polished financials from a pre-seed company with no product, no customers, and no revenue. “That is why SF beats us: because they invest off of vibes,” he said, “and that’s something Seattle could do a little bit more.”