Some investors looked askance at Geoff Cook’s choice to locate myYearbook, the social networking site he co-founded, in New Hope, Pennsylvania, Inc.com reports.
Didn’t he know that New York, Boston, and the Valley were the places to be?
Cook feels that there have been a number of advantages to running his 80-person start-up from a town of 2,200. One particular advantage was avoiding Silicon Valley groupthink. “Our early decisions to stay put made us natural contrarians on topics we may have viewed differently had we been in the Valley,” Cook writes.
He’s referring to the company’s choices to be cost-conscious and make revenue central from the start at a time when that wasn’t what many tech and social-networking companies were expected to do.
Cook also feels that this small town environment gives him access to an untapped talent pool and gives the company a more familial close-knit culture.
Photo by city-data.com.