Contrary to your assumption I've done a reasonable amount of traveling. This summer, for example, I'm working from Paris for a month. I've done an internship in the US and visited four continents and around fourteen countries. I'm not done traveling, because there is so much left to see and experience, but I do have a little international perspective.
I tried to give some perspective with my post, but didn't intend to be overly pessimistic. In fact, I applaud your initiative (in hindsight, I could've been more clear about that). That being said, I still think that we lack an entrepreneurial culture here in the Netherlands[1] and that the image of intellectual and cultural freedom that might attract foreign startups has lost part of its shine in the last decade of isolationism[2], high-profile political murders and racial tension.
I do wish to concede on my point that Amsterdam isn't really a local technical startup hub in the first place, apart from the creative industry and mobile applications. From the Dutch perspective this might be true, as we have more advanced hubs in Enschede/Twente and Eindhoven, but from an international perspective distances are so small that this isn't really a factor and your initiative seems to be broader than just Amsterdam anyway. Amsterdam definitely has more allure to foreigners than provincial towns like Eindhoven and Enchede. E.g. Utrecht is one of the universities on the forefront of the Haskell community and this city is 30 minutes by train from Amsterdam. Groningen is a bit further, but their university has some great hackers working on cool stuff too (like two NLP specialists that are also on HN: http://nlpwp.org/book/).
Other than the "inappropriately pessimistic" tone, is there anything in my post you disagree with on a factual basis? I do consider myself an optimist, by the way, because you almost have to be as a startup guy. So what you might consider "inappropriate pessimism" is realistic optimism to me. I do wish your initiative to succeed and it is a lot more promising than the government-funded campaigns we've seen. I'm highly skeptical about government intervention because it rarely (if ever) works. Private initiatives like Appsterdam do have potential, though. In fact, I'm hoping to attend one of your meetings to see what all the fuzz is about.
[1] The Dutch people aren't very much inclined towards risk taking and entrepreneurialism, to say the least. Also, high taxes and business-unfriendly labour laws aren't helpful either. Contrary to the American Dream, we have a culture of applauding the average and consensus. We're keen on making money and sometimes prone to mass hysteria when speculating (e.g. the famous 17th century Tulip Mania and the more recent WorldOnline debacle), but the average Dutchman frowns on people that want to excel. A typical Dutch saying is "Doe maar gewoon, dan doe je al gek genoeg" (lose translation: "Just be normal and average, that is sufficiently special and crazy").
[2] E.g. the majority of the country is very negative about the EU and the Euro, famously voting against the very reasonable referendum on the European 'constitution' a few years back out of spite towards the political elite. These people live in a world where they think everything got more expensive since the introduction of the Euro, while in fact the opposite is true.
I tried to give some perspective with my post, but didn't intend to be overly pessimistic. In fact, I applaud your initiative (in hindsight, I could've been more clear about that). That being said, I still think that we lack an entrepreneurial culture here in the Netherlands[1] and that the image of intellectual and cultural freedom that might attract foreign startups has lost part of its shine in the last decade of isolationism[2], high-profile political murders and racial tension.
I do wish to concede on my point that Amsterdam isn't really a local technical startup hub in the first place, apart from the creative industry and mobile applications. From the Dutch perspective this might be true, as we have more advanced hubs in Enschede/Twente and Eindhoven, but from an international perspective distances are so small that this isn't really a factor and your initiative seems to be broader than just Amsterdam anyway. Amsterdam definitely has more allure to foreigners than provincial towns like Eindhoven and Enchede. E.g. Utrecht is one of the universities on the forefront of the Haskell community and this city is 30 minutes by train from Amsterdam. Groningen is a bit further, but their university has some great hackers working on cool stuff too (like two NLP specialists that are also on HN: http://nlpwp.org/book/).
Other than the "inappropriately pessimistic" tone, is there anything in my post you disagree with on a factual basis? I do consider myself an optimist, by the way, because you almost have to be as a startup guy. So what you might consider "inappropriate pessimism" is realistic optimism to me. I do wish your initiative to succeed and it is a lot more promising than the government-funded campaigns we've seen. I'm highly skeptical about government intervention because it rarely (if ever) works. Private initiatives like Appsterdam do have potential, though. In fact, I'm hoping to attend one of your meetings to see what all the fuzz is about.
[1] The Dutch people aren't very much inclined towards risk taking and entrepreneurialism, to say the least. Also, high taxes and business-unfriendly labour laws aren't helpful either. Contrary to the American Dream, we have a culture of applauding the average and consensus. We're keen on making money and sometimes prone to mass hysteria when speculating (e.g. the famous 17th century Tulip Mania and the more recent WorldOnline debacle), but the average Dutchman frowns on people that want to excel. A typical Dutch saying is "Doe maar gewoon, dan doe je al gek genoeg" (lose translation: "Just be normal and average, that is sufficiently special and crazy").
[2] E.g. the majority of the country is very negative about the EU and the Euro, famously voting against the very reasonable referendum on the European 'constitution' a few years back out of spite towards the political elite. These people live in a world where they think everything got more expensive since the introduction of the Euro, while in fact the opposite is true.