Too much time and ink have already been spent comparing Boston to New York or San Francisco. My attitude is that there are a variety of reasons to live in one city over another, and that we should all focus on doing the best work we can and building the best possible startup community.
Still, it’s understandable that a very competitive group of people would take pride in their city, and argue for its superiority. Bostonians don’t appreciate being compared unfavorably to New York and characterized as a city in [startup] decline. And yet it’s hard to argue with NYC’s meteoric rise in internet and mobile, or with Silicon Valleys overall dominance in VC financings. (And no, per capita comparisons between California and Massachusetts are not a more accurate metric.)
But there’s one metric that clearly spells out why Boston remains supremely relevant to global innovation, more so than any VC data suggests. That metric is founders educated.
Yes, I’m guilty of having written about this data previously and only mentioning this metric in passing. But take a look at where the founders of Inc. 500 companies were educated, via The Kauffman Foundation:
Now, New York is no slouch. But despite being a much larger city, Boston has it beat. And even if San Francisco and San Jose are combined, they’re well behind.
I still think that we’re best served by avoiding chips on shoulders and simply working to build the best possible innovation cluster here in Boston. But to the extent that we want to take pride in something, let’s make it this. Boston produces something more valuable than software, hardware, medicine, or energy, as important as those things are. We produce human talent, and we do so in spades. Wherever you go in America, if you walk into a room of successful entrepreneurs, there’s a decent chance one or more of them went to school in Boston.
That, to me, is something to be proud of.
