Etesse says Washington “has some of the best universities and deep technical talent,” and notes that “we’re able to attract that talent but we don’t have as much competition as New York City or Silicon Valley.”
Mrim Boutla relocated to Washington from Indiana and moved into the 1776 for her e-learning and job placement startup saying the city “has both the nonprofit, the profit and government sectors that can interact and intersect in social innovation.”
She said the shared workspace puts her in contact with “a great fellowship of changemakers” and “helps me stay energized in the lonely journey of being an entrepreneur.”
Some startups in the city are also flocking to warehouse style shared workspace offered by WeWork, which has nearly filled up its office location in the Chinatown section with some 200 startups in technology and other sectors.
WeWork, which operates in several US cities and is expanding abroad, is opening two more locations in Washington capable of hosting as many as 1,000 startups.
“When you join WeWork you join the whole network,” said Carl Pierre, who manages the Washington offices. “So you can arrange for a conference in New York, you can spend a week in San Francisco and work out of our space there.”
– Big fish, medium pond –
Some of the credit for the startup ecosystem goes to people like Peter Corbett, who moved to Washington a decade ago to launch design and consulting firm iStrategyLabs, and has since become an angel investor, mentor and adviser to the mayor’s office on tech policy.
“Being located here gave us the ability to be a very shiny small fish in a medium sized pond and it allowed us to build national and international recognition,” Corbett told AFP.
“There’s plenty of capital, and the community is incredible.”
Corbett began hosting meetups, hackathons and cocktail events for the tech community and has seen attendance grow from a handful of people to hundreds.
“Every year you have 20,000 young people moving to DC,” he said.
“The way you build an ecosystem is having the density of brains, so there is friction. And the friction turns into ideas. That typically happens in Silicon Valley but it is happening here now too.”
While startup activity has grown around the United States and globally, entrepreneurs get assistance in the city of Washington, where 1776 has support for the city government, Microsoft and other corporate sponsors who help with coaching, financing and other startup issues.
“There has been tremendous growth of both the support system and the community around entrepreneurs and startups” in the area, says Michael Chasen, a veteran of the city’s technology scene who founded the education technology firm Blackboard — sold in 2011 for nearly $2 billion — and this year launched a social networking app called SocialRadar.
Chasen said Washington benefits from tax incentives, incubators like 1776 and the growing tech community which feeds new ideas.
The most prominent tech startups coming out of the capital include Blackboard and LivingSocial, the online deals group which grew quickly to some 4,500 employees globally before streamlining. But LivingSocial still has more than 500 employees in the city.
The region “features one of the country’s most vibrant and creative start-up cultures and benefits from having a highly educated and tech-savvy population,” notes LivingSocial spokeswoman Sara Parker.
The shared workplace is not a new concept but tech friendly locations like 1776 and WeWork are attracting startups by offering services geared to them. This ranges from kitchen space and coffer to help with media, search optimization and financing.
“There’s a certain vibe here,” said Ian Reis, who is developing an app called Responder to assist local firefighters and emergency personnel, in the WeWork office.
“We’ve made contact with a lot of people we never would have met otherwise.”
At 1776, collaboration is easy among the startups, says John Gossart of Ridescout, an app which helps people find the best commuting solutions.
“There are a lot of people with shared interests,” he said. “There’s a wealth of talent walking around the streets, and walking around in 1776.”
