When I was there the Seattle Angel community was deeply broken.
Seattle Angels thought they had this great tight-knit community with lots of events, but every Angel was secretly terrified to pass on any founders they met to any other Angels, not because the other Angel would steal them but because the other Angel might think the startup was stupid and lose respect for the Angel.
Go down the coast to Silicon Valley and angels made handoffs constantly ("you're doing biotech, I don't know anything about biotech, let me connect you to my buddy who does biotech investing"). None of that happened in Seattle.
The end result is valley angels got tons of dealflow that steadily walked deals towards the right investors. Seattle angels got no deal flow and Seattle founders spent all their time pitching people who were not good fits while valley founders quickly found the right investors to pitch.
Every recently funded seattle founder I knew or met told me the exact same thing when I was doing a startup there "I understand why you're trying to raise here in Seattle, we felt the same way, I wish we'd gone to the valley sooner." Every single one said that.
It was a lot like the term the "Seattle Freeze" that people used to use to talk about the dating market there. Everyone is super friendly and it's very easy to get the first conversation, but after that everything freezes and nothing advances the way it does in other cities, plus most of the angels were from huge companies and had no idea what was actually involved in starting a company.
When I was there, most angels also perceived the seattle venture market to be broken and much too small, so angels told startups we won't invest unless you can show us you won't ever need additional capital after this raise because we don't believe seattle companies can raise VC capital (yes, I heard that exact statement from multiple angels). That attitude, unsurprisingly, was highly contributory to their being no startups that were interesting to VC's, guaranteeing seattle companies weren't getting VC funding, because those angels expected you to get to hugely profitable valuations on $1.5MM of Angel funding, period. There are businesses that can do that, but they are lifestyle businesses not venture businesses.
Anyway, I'm mostly surprised Seattle has ranked as high as it has for as long as it has.
Seattle Angels thought they had this great tight-knit community with lots of events, but every Angel was secretly terrified to pass on any founders they met to any other Angels, not because the other Angel would steal them but because the other Angel might think the startup was stupid and lose respect for the Angel.
Go down the coast to Silicon Valley and angels made handoffs constantly ("you're doing biotech, I don't know anything about biotech, let me connect you to my buddy who does biotech investing"). None of that happened in Seattle.
The end result is valley angels got tons of dealflow that steadily walked deals towards the right investors. Seattle angels got no deal flow and Seattle founders spent all their time pitching people who were not good fits while valley founders quickly found the right investors to pitch.
Every recently funded seattle founder I knew or met told me the exact same thing when I was doing a startup there "I understand why you're trying to raise here in Seattle, we felt the same way, I wish we'd gone to the valley sooner." Every single one said that.
It was a lot like the term the "Seattle Freeze" that people used to use to talk about the dating market there. Everyone is super friendly and it's very easy to get the first conversation, but after that everything freezes and nothing advances the way it does in other cities, plus most of the angels were from huge companies and had no idea what was actually involved in starting a company.
When I was there, most angels also perceived the seattle venture market to be broken and much too small, so angels told startups we won't invest unless you can show us you won't ever need additional capital after this raise because we don't believe seattle companies can raise VC capital (yes, I heard that exact statement from multiple angels). That attitude, unsurprisingly, was highly contributory to their being no startups that were interesting to VC's, guaranteeing seattle companies weren't getting VC funding, because those angels expected you to get to hugely profitable valuations on $1.5MM of Angel funding, period. There are businesses that can do that, but they are lifestyle businesses not venture businesses.
Anyway, I'm mostly surprised Seattle has ranked as high as it has for as long as it has.