I probably shouldn't chime in but since my name was brought up a couple of times I feel compelled.
Yeah, I'm Indian. Yeah I'm American too (born and raised in Kentucky).
Is there prejudice in the world? Yeah, sure.
Have I experienced prejudice/racism? Of course - and not just in Georgia or Kentucky but all over the world.
Does it matter one bit (at least to me)? Nope.
Anyone that shows prejudice (based on race or otherwise) is someone I don't need to be friends with, do business with, or interact with. I've never felt like a customer wouldn't buy because of some racial prejudice or an investor wouldn't invest because of the same. If they did, would I even want to do business with someone so small minded? No, I wouldn't.
Starting a company is hard. It doesn't matter if you don't have one hurdle or another - there are a lot of obstacles to a successful liquidity event. Entrepreneurship isn't a path where success is guaranteed. If it were, everyone would do it.
So my point is this - sure, prejudice may exist and you may think it will hinder you from succeeding. So what? No one said this was going to be easy. On the contrary, the large potential rewards upon success all but determine that it will be very, very difficult to achieve (go read an economics book if you don't get the reasoning as to why).
So just get to work, start your company, and be successful. This stuff is all noise and if it derails you - you need to become a better entrepreneur/leader rather than complain that someone kept you from succeeding.
What I find the most ridiculous about the comments in this thread about the "prejudice" people have experienced in Atlanta is that the prejudice cited was coming from places like... people on marta trains.
Really? What people on a subway say to you has a bearing on a startup?
If we're going to have a discussion about having a startup in Atlanta, we should be evaluating the racism and prejudice that exists within the community that a startup would actually deal with on a day to day basis. The people that actually matter, the people that would have an effect on your startup. The business people, the technical talent, the fellow entrepreneurs. Not people on marta trains.
So yeah, to back up your final point: what racist bigots on subway trains say to you should be thrown into the "noise" bucket, no matter where you are or what you're doing.
I don't know how in the heck an article answering the questions that PG posed turned into a string of comments about racism and calling people meatheads.
But since someone opened the door and let the big elephant in the room, I am going to go ahead and admit that it's standing there. The sub-culture of technology startups is dominated by white males. Minorities are not represented at the same proportion of their general population percentages anywhere in the country. I am not saying its right and we should all work to correct the issue. But it is. Look at the YC companies. Look at the TechCunch50. Look at Demo. Saying that it's just Atlanta is unfounded stereotyping.
It would be much more beneficial to discuss Atlanta and other cities on the criteria that PG laid out. In my article I pointed out that Atlanta could be more tolerant. The city is not alone.
I am an Asian American, doing a startup in Silicon Valley, and I have not experienced discrimination because of the color of my skin. There are plenty of Asian American CEOs, Angels, and VCs everywhere. Perhaps, if anything, a little disproportionate to the true percentage of Asian Americans in California.
I think Asian is the one main exception to that rule, just as it's the exception when it comes to minorities in elite colleges.
Asian Americans don't have as much of a history of economic and political oppression (There was some, obviously, especially during WWII.), and the culture strongly encourages working hard to excel at school, helping them then get good educations and break out of the initial poverty cycles that formed when Asians first came over and were exploited by railroad companies and the like.
But if you look at startups for other minorities--Hispanics, African Americans--I think it is pretty true that they are not well-represented.
I have no idea about the situation in the US but could this be due to other factors? For instance, you mention that these minorities are under represented in certain colleges to begin with - a place where a lot of startups begin. Perhaps there is less internet exposure too, or at least to the startup community blogs etc.. And maybe it just comes down to a perpetuating loop situation. In any case, and I don't really know US attitudes, but I would doubt in this day and age there is a conscious effort among hackers, who are generally more liberty and equality focused anyway, to exclude people based on anything other than merit.
The sub-culture of technology startups is dominated by white males. Minorities are not represented at the same proportion of their general population percentages anywhere in the country.
I think this misses the point. In Silicon Valley, several minority populations are well-represented in the startup community. In particular, many startups are started by Asians and by people born outside the U.S. These groups are much less represented in Atlanta, and it's a catch-22 but this makes it tough for Atlanta to attract those startups.
In Atlanta in particular this is not true. Two of the most successful companies started in Atlanta: CipherTrust and Manhattan Associates (although you may not think of the latter as a startup now) were started by Indians. I personally know of several other "very likely" to be successful startups started by minorities.
If you read news about Startup Riot on the front page of HN in the past week, it is run by Sanjay Parekh, another successful Indian American entrepreneur out of Atlanta.
I am Indian American and I cofounded a startup in Atlanta last year. I have yet to experience any bias. I have worked in Silicon Valley at a startup and the startup community in Atlanta is at least as welcoming to minorities as in the valley. The valley attracts more minorities simply because there are more opportunities
Nearly 80% of the engineering team at CipherTrust consisted of Chinese, Indian and African American engineers.
California in general may be much more liberal than Geogia but Atlanta is a very very open minded place not just for ethnic or racial minorities, there is a thriving gay community in Atlanta. If you visit us, take a stroll in midtown some day so that Atlanta may disabuse you of false notions about the South.
I believe that the Atlanta area contains two of the ten gayest counties in America. Atlanta is definitely hipper and more tolerant than the rest of Georgia. People shouldn't judge it until they give it a visit.
Perhaps my comment contained too many prejudices, I apologize. I should have said that in my experience, I have not found any cities with large concentrations of gay people that match the close-minded deep south stereotype. There is a good reason for this - people generally don't enjoy living in areas where they aren't welcomed, and they move. Atlanta is a very metropolitan city, full of people of all different sorts of cultural groups. It is not the kind of place where people are persecuted for being different, or where the residents have a narrow-minded view of the human experience. You will find yoga parlors, sports teams, nerds, professionals, underground (literally!) indie dance clubs, clubs that only let you in if you know P Diddy, trendy restaurants in renovated warehouses, the best cuisine south of New York, weird religions, traditional religions, and, yes, two of the largest county-level gay populations in America (Dekalb and Fulton). On top of that, I paid $350/month in rent when I lived there. It's a good place to live.
I apologize for the previous flippant, un-nuanced comment that I snuck in while coding. It's a bad habit.
Don't worry about it -- I really just found your particular phrasing funny because of its superficial resemblance to that Sacha Baron Cohen line. I was saying that I was off-topic.
Being a member of Lance's 50% Asian cofounder club, I was going to reply earlier, but my internet gave out. And thank goodness. From reading some of the comments, I think I must be living in another Atlanta. I'll stick with mine, thanks.
You're very right. In fact, 30% of SV startups are by non-Americans. And there are huge networks in SV representing all kinds of minorities, from Indians to Chinese to Filipino to Afghan. There's even one around African entrepreneurs (note, not African American).
As long as you can drink Coca-Cola instead of Pepsi while coding Atlanta is a great place for Silicon Valley 2.
Costs of living are likely far lower than Silicon Valley, so you could become "ramen profitable" sooner. I'm paying $550 a month in rent for a gated townhouse with a 2-car garage right outside the perimeter.
You could get plenty of hackers from Georgia Tech who unlike grads from a private school won't have too much debt in student loans. Go Jackets and What's the good Word?
Atlanta could certainly improve on its public transportation, but if you live in Midtown you can walk most places. If you are in Tech Square, you can use Georgia Tech's trolly and bus system.
Culturally it's hit or miss. At a coffee shop, most of which close too early for a late night caffeine fix, you are more likely to overhear conversations about the latest trend in hip-hop or fashion, but I have seen a few Linux running Eee PCs in the wild.
I heard that Atlantic Station condos are going for bargain basement prices right now (a friend is hoping to sell for a 60K loss) -- walk to movies, food, and groceries and bike to Tech Square. It's tempting to think of what living in Atlanta could be without its defining characteristic (godawful traffic).
Without going into all the other factors, Atlanta does have the necessary condition -- a concentration of smart people.
Atlanta feels more like Chicago than SF to me -- the sprawl is worse, the weather is better (but it's certainly not the California coast), and the meathead culture is substantial although I'm not sure I can compare it to Chicago's.
The Olympics were a good thing for the downtown area, and there is some government willpower to make it more appealing to entrpreneurs -- notably in biotech. With the CDC, Emory, and Georgia Tech, things could certainly be worse for startups, but I still wouldn't pick Atlanta as a likely new startup hub. The same government support that keeps the city afloat also feels a bit stifling. Poverty in the city center and sprawl everywhere else is depressing. And the general perception of Georgia in the existing startup hubs is even worse than the area actually is; offering a group of hackers $1 million to move to the deep South sounds like a mind game or a social experiment, not a serious offer.
Compare: When the last tech bubble burst it seemed like a lot of engineers left the Bay Area and resettled around San Diego. La Jolla has UCSD, a pool of biotech serial entrpreneurs and angels, even better weather than Palo Alto, and decent burritos and pho. Public transportation could be better, and it is getting better. So, it would take some extreme persuasion to keep me from heading right back to the west coast when I finish grad school.
Chicago isn't a sprawl city. San Diego and San Jose definitely are. I don't know what a "meathead culture" is, but your favorite band is more likely to play here than in Atlanta or San Francisco.
Chicago has much more sprawl than San Jose. The latter is confined somewhat by geography and several open space preserves, while there is apparently nothing to stop the westward migration of Chicago's suburbs. After spending my university years in the Chicago area it was very bizarre to visit last week and realize that you can almost drive from the loop to Rockford without leaving suburbs/exurbs along I80. It is somewhat similar to how Austin and Round Rock used to actually be cities separated by open expanses of empty space and now the trip between the two cities can be navigated just by hopping from one strip mall parking lot to another...
You had to predict that someone was going to offer up a bespoke definition of "sprawl" to defend San Jose, and there you go. Thanks!
First, if you want to define "sprawl" geographically, then the Bay Area and Chicago are almost identical: it's 40.4 miles from the loop to Elgin, and 40.2 miles from the Sunset to Pleasanton. In both cases, that drive is an unbroken parade of suburbs.
Second, the conventional definition of "sprawl" is by population density. Chicago's is 12,500/sq mile; 2.8M people live within the borders of the city. San Francisco is more dense, but has only 800,000 people. No valley city even comes close.
Finally, your anecdote about the drive to Rockford would apply just as well to NYC --- drive 50 miles in any direction from NYC waiting for the suburbs to stop. Apparently NYC is also a sprawl city.
Notice I'm giving you the most favorable possible comparison here, pretending you compared San Francisco to Chicago and not San Jose. Saying "Chicago has much more sprawl than San Jose" is like saying "Chicago has much more sprawl than Oak Brook, IL". San Jose is a suburb with a couple tall buildings, surrounded on all sides by 10-15 miles of flatter suburbs.
I think public transportation in the NYC area makes the "sprawl" into Jersey, Connecticut or even parts of PA not so bad. Hailing from that region, but living now in the western outskirts of Chicagoland, I can attest to the very strange difference of the sprawl here versus what I'd term as "cohesive" outgrowth in NYC.
If you're out by Plainfield or (god help you) Dekalb, you're dealing with the impact of the mortgage bubble over the last 10 years, which has totally over-developed the former farmland that surrounded Chicago. Much of the Chicago suburbs have public transportion access that rivals the NYC suburbs.
Sorry, no disrespect intended by the "meathead" phrase -- the edit link is gone now, but I meant whether a city council would rather invest in 1000 startups or a football stadium. Sports seem pretty popular in Chicago and ATL, less so in SF, with SD somewhere in the middle.
SF city apparently killed off its own music scene in cold blood during the last decade, but Atlanta's is alive and well right now.
It's not on fire. It has turned into a healthy discussion. What I am hearing is that lots of hackers have issue with moving to ATL due to perceptions with tolerance. Fair enough.
Now if we ever started writing $1 million checks it would be interesting to see how people would vote with their feet. In my day job I get inquires from all over the world from people that would move to Georgia for a little help.
Thanks for the article that inspired me and the spirited discussion.
Industrial and Systems Engineering -- Industrial engineering is the degree program that generally encompasses supply chain management, though it is also covered by technical MBA programs, particularly those at universities without degree programs in industrial engineering.
Don't forget that having UPS as an Atlanta based company has helped in creating logistics oriented companies here. That plus Memphis (home to FedEx) isn't that far either.
1. Quality of life in Atlanta is good enough that smart people could be convinced to move here. Its warm, there are good restaurants, there is good shopping, there are funky neighborhoods and bars, its a short drive down to nice beaches where the water is actually warm enough to swim in. Hell, I've been snowboarding 4 weekends so far this season within a few hours of town. It does not have a national reputation for being ultra-hip, but as I said in the other thread, I don't think that matters. In fact, around the turn of the century (am I allowed to say that yet) neighborhoods in SF that were hip and trendy and neighborhoods in SF that were dripping in startup money were mutually exclusive, and being anyway associated with the tech industry was just about the most uncool thing you could possible be there even though everybody was.
2. There are some people who wouldn't move to Atlanta, for reasons that are both reasonable and unreasonable. However, the same thing can be said about San Francisco. Some people will not move there because they don't like the culture or they are worried that they are going to die in an Earthquake. Atlanta does have an undercurrent of racism and that does bare repeating. But its not a death knell for the city as a center for innovation. We have a very diverse community here who can work together and produce great companies.
3. Atlanta has a vibrant, multifaceted nerd scene with various strong universities, technical user groups, cons, parties, mailing lists, web sites, facebook groups, etc. In fact I find it far easier to get networked in with other nerds here than in San Francisco, where scenes tend to be a bit more snobbish, exclusive, and corrupted by the presence of wealth. There are some things I wish were going on here that aren't, such as a genuine hacker space, but in general the "scene" here is strong and growing stronger at a regular pace.
4. In addition to the aforementioned nerd scene, I think the things that matter are the right legal framework for innovation (which I explained in the other thread, and I do not agree that the differences are trivial particularly with regard to intellectual property laws), and a supportive environment of investors and incubators. The later seems to be improving, but unfortunately the stock market crash has made everything more difficult.
5. I strongly agree with jhaynie that Atlanta has got to look at its individual technical strengths. There are certain technical communities that are particularly strong here. Innovation is not about copying San Francisco - its about leading, on the world stage, in terms of the direction we need to take technology. For example, this is a time when every business in world is asking itself how it can reduce its costs. Our concentration of industrial engineers may have new answers to that question that you aren't going to get out of Palo Alto.
I probably shouldn't even delve into commenting on a stream that has turned a positive blog article into "atlanta is racist". strange.
I grew up in Atlanta but have lived in Chicago, Washington state, Florida and Tokyo, Japan. I now live in Mountain View, California in the heart of the valley.
Atlanta is a great place to live, raise a family and has its own unique tech/geek/startup culture. It's hard to compare the valley to Atlanta - but that's true with any other location on the planet. Silicon Valley is unique and difficult to replicate.
These types of "centers" happen because of aggregation of people and resources. Nashville has an aggregation that supports country music, Atlanta has hip-hop, LA has Hollywood, D.C. has politics and NYC still is the financial capital of the world. Silicon Valley is just the technology capital of the world. With any rule, you have exceptions - plenty of great technology companies come out of Vancouver, Seattle, Portland and Denver (just to name a few).
What Atlanta and all other places should focus on isn't how to replicate the valley - but instead, how to create their own unique place which highlights and rewards their own achievements and strengths. It will take a lot of constituents to make that happen - entrepreneurs, investors, law makers and educators.
One stark contrast that might be worth exploring is the difference between the Valley and other locations is reinvestment through the social contract. In the Valley, there is a very strong sense of a social contract from entrepreneurs to entrepreneurs (and investors to entrepreneurs). I feel a much stronger sense of success which breeds more success (or help, resources, guidance and mentorship). In fact, anecdotally, it seems like way more entrepreneurs "who make it big" in the valley, attempt to repeat - either directly in their own subsequent startups or minimally through very active advising and investment in younger upstarts. I would contrast that to Atlanta where I believe that's more of the exception than the norm. (Plenty of people have such as John Imlay, Mitch Free, Alan Graber, Tom Noonon, just to name a few). My own personal assessment is that it might be because there are (a) fewer very large exits in Atlanta, (b) it's easier to retire with less money in Atlanta and (c) there's no peer pressure to do it again.
Recently, however, I'm very encouraged by all of the entrepreneurs that have decided to take things into their own hands. Atlanta knows who they are (Lance Weatherby, Scott Burkett, Sanjay Parekh and all the guys at Shotput Ventures like David Cummings and Mitch Free). I've long said it's the entrepreneurs that will "save Atlanta" -- if there is such as thing that people believe is necessary.
I'm very much rooting for Atlanta. Not to become yet-another-failed-silicon-valley replication attempt. Wow, gives a f* about that. I'm rooting for Atlanta to become it's own identity: something more powerful, more creative, more sustainable and more unique. Something that people say: "you can only do that in Atlanta".
Having lived in the ATL for about 8 years and the Bay Area for 5, I'd have to strongly disagree with one of the article's points:
"1) Do you have good weather?"
Atlanta does not have good weather. It is either really cold or really hot. It is nothing like the Bay Area's year round temperate weather.
During the fall and winter, Atlanta is typically gloomy and overcast almost every day. It's cold enough to ice too... I still remember feeling stupid for not wearing ear muffs or a hood walking across Tech's campus; it felt like my ears were going to fall off. Gloves are good idea too unless you want your hands goin dead.
During the spring and summer, it is very sunny but it is also really hot. Though not as bad as Florida, there are days where you can just walk for a 1/2 hour outside and be drenched in sweat. Air conditioning is a must, and your electric bill will reflect that.
Its relative. The continental US has huge variance in weather and Atlanta's weather is comparatively mild to most places. Our winter lows are between 10-20F, and not on very many days. It snows only once every year or two. Few people wouldn't move to Atlanta because of the weather. Now compare that to... Montana, or Maine. Or Seattle, for that matter. We have lots of New York transplants in Atlanta, and they love our weather :)
A bit off topic but... at least in Florida you can beat the heat in the ocean :)
P.S. It rained a foot, then snowed a foot at my house in Georgia the last 2 days.
One big problem with starting businesses in the South is racism and intolerance of outsiders. A key part of Silicon Valley is attracting the best talent from anywhere in the world, and it's going to be hard to do that in Atlanta.
For example (from Wikipedia), Atlanta is 2% Asian. San Francisco is 33% Asian. In fact 36% of San Franciscans were born outside the US.
edit: I do not mean to say that southern == racist. Far from it. I don't know how to measure racism. But for something like attracting immigrants to a city, perception of racism can be even more important than reality. And I am sure there is at least a common perception that Georgia is unfriendly to Asian immigrants.
Well, sort of. There are large Asian communities in the suburbs between Buford Highway and Duluth, and the Asian population of Georgia Tech (around which most startups are based) is not insignificant. While racism is a problem in the South, thats not going to be an issue for hackers in the city. Quite the opposite: Atlanta is a diverse, tolerant place.
Atlanta is diverse and tolerant by the standards of Georgia, but it is a far cry from California or NYC. Just the perception of the entire South as an unfriendly place for non-white people will prevent many people from moving there. Plus, it is hard to attract immigrants - a lot of smart hacker immigrants would never move to a "red state".
Right, but I don't think you've actually spent any time in Atlanta, because what you are saying is wrong.
I live here, and I've spent time in California, North Carolina, Ohio, all the places you mention and Atlanta is as tolerant as California. Midtown Atlanta is the most gay accepting place outside of West Hollywood or the Castro, and if you think there is a shortage of Asians here you've obviously never been here.
You're just projecting your own prejudices. You don't know anything about Atlanta.
I'm not trying to say anything bad about Atlantans. I'm just saying that there are much fewer Asian-Americans and foreign-born people in Atlanta than in San Francisco, and that makes it hard to attract more to Atlanta. (And these groups are a signature of Silicon Valley.)
Atlanta:
1.9% Asian
3.6% of companies are Asian-owned
6.6% foreign-born
San Francisco:
30.8% Asian
21.4% of companies are Asian-owned
36.8% foreign-born
What? Where do you live in Atlanta? I've spent the last 7 years in Atlanta and I can tell you that it's not as tolerant as you think. I spent about 3 years living in Canlen Walk (Near the intersection of 85 & Buford Hwy), 4 years on the Georgia Tech campus. What ethnicity are you?
I can count many times walking from shops near the Varsity around North Ave when I encounter African Americans, they always ching-chong me thinking I'm from out of the country. I'm like dude, I've lived in America for as long as you have.
The area around Varsity and North Ave consists of GT students, who are a very liberal community or people who are basically just poor. Unfortunately you will find that racism amongst poor people is higher simply on account of ignorance.
I've been living in Atlanta for a little over a year and hanged out mostly in the Cumberland area and the Decatur area. I've walked through the North Ave. / Varsity area for various things before.
I've lived in Auburn, AL for five years, and Columbus, OH for 17 years.
I also practice my martial arts regularly at Downtown Decatur, which often means bringing a wooden broadsword. The people who generally ask me about it are the African Americans hanging out around the MARTA stations. ("Look man, it really isn't that interesting. It is fake" "I just want to see it." "Yeah, here") I occasionally get riffed walking by, "Hey, its kung fu master!" while I'm walking to Decatur Square. It annoys me, yet never once had I felt it was racist. I chalk it up to cultural differences.
People have always been friendlier in Georgia and Alabama than they were in OH. If I make even the slightest eye contact, people will say "Hi" ... and that's how I interpret what those guys hanging around the station are doing. Strangers generally don't do that in Columbus, OH.
On my walking route to the station, I pass a lot of other pedestrians or joggers. I have my practice sword stuck into my backpack. I noticed the number of people who say "Hi" to me increase dramatically, particularly among the women who are jogging by themselves. Part of that, I know, is the baseline hospitality I generally get from strangers here in the South. The other part has got to be from thinking, "hey, who is this dude walking around with a sword handle sticking out of his back, maybe I should preempt anything by saying 'hi'". It doesn't always happen all the time, but that's the way things are.
And just to keep things on the level and honest, there were times when I talked to some of my Asian martial arts buddies here, and the conversation somehow gets into "white people." You have to realize that I do not imagine myself as particularly Asian when I close my eyes and visualize who I am. It simply isn't a strong part of my identity unless someone brings it up. When the conversation turns that way, it jolts me, "hey, wait a minute ..."
I remember being surprised from reading about racism in the local papers when I first moved out to Atlanta. I started watching people.
I think people here in Atlanta are no different than other places I've lived at, or encountered briefly in my (limited) travels: the racism comes from our xenophobic tendencies being great apes. We say things to each other about those people all the time -- those Californians, those Georgians, those VCs, those angel investors, those entrepreneurs, those nerds, those jocks, those preps, those ...
And that very same tendency to form packs also means that individuals gets exempt. You might find yourself talking to a neighbor who say things about one of your affliations, and when you bring it up, they may say, "Oh, but you are OK."
Racism is one of the manifestations of human primate tendency to form packs. It has resulted in some ugly things in our history. Trace it back through history, and no ... group ... has ever been left untainted by this. And besides, a lot of us develop software here. You should know by now how difficult it is to define software architecture, know when to divide things and when to generalize them. There are always some sort of special case. Human nature is even more irrational, even less amendable to be put into its proper Classes and Object Instantiations and whatever.
My business partner (who is not Asian) told me about this thread and how a discussion about the Atlanta startup scene gets derailed into talking about the racism here. I started laughing. I told him, yeah sure, I'll come here to gawk at the burning wreckage too.
No. Atlanta is diverse and tolerant by any Standard. I say that having lived in Atlanta, NYC and San Jose. Sure, we don't have as many Asians as either NYC or the bay area, but implying that Atlanta is not tolerant is just plain wrong.
> a lot of smart hacker immigrants would never move to a "red state".
As someone who isn't an American I can't really weigh in on this statement but there is plenty of data that suggests that hackers would live in a "red state".
California was a red state for all of the 60's through to the end of the 80's and silicon valley thrived during that time.
Austin is both in the south and a "red state" and is one of the techier cities in the US. Austin itself has a reputation for being hip and eccentric, however. I think the real question is, "Can a city the size of Atlanta make itself over?"
Erm, I guess you have a higher threshold for tolerance. Every time I board Marta, I'm usually mocked by someone of African American decent there. And almost every time I have to explain that I grew up here, I'm as American as you, yada yada. And these Marta stations are pretty close to downtown (Midtown, Peachtree, Lindbergh station, etc) Diverse? Partially. Tolerant? No.
Diversity is nothing compared to SF. Atlanta has whites, blacks, and latinos. You won't find a significant percentage of another. Even on Buford Highway where the majority of Asian grocery stores are, you'll find that Latinos outnumber the Asian population 2:1. California has a good mix of everyone, it's the reason I love it here.
I don't get mocked when I board MARTA. I ride from Dunwoody all the way to Five Points and out to Decatur, both during the evening rush hour and late at night.
... There are things you can do to your body language that can keep that from happening. If you hate being where you are -- Atlanta or not -- it'll show up in your body language.
First of all, painting the entire South with a single brush reeks of bias. Atlanta is not racist. I have lived here for 5 years and as an Indian American and I am yet to experience a single experience of racism. This has to be plain luck because in the few months that I lived in NYC, I experienced some.
Seriously, visit Atlanta, see how many African Americans, Asians, Indians and yes, gay people lead a happy life very much free from pain caused by bias over here.
If you really want to fight racism, please at least praise the lack of bias and openness in a community when you see it. Painting these with the same brush and giving them no credit for their openness guarantees that they will die away.
I am speaking from the experience of having lived in Ohio, North Carolina, and San Francisco. The proximity to Asia is definitely another factor, but there is definitely at least a perception of racism in the South that discourages Asian and foreigners from moving there.
Even though you are wrong, and speak from inexperience and prejudice, your opinion does point out something important: people like you have a prejudice against Atlanta as 'backwards' because it is in a region with different social problems than you are used to.
As an Asian who has lived in Atlanta for 7 years, I can definitely tell you that it's not friendly to live there as an Asian. Well, it's better than some places, but it's definitely crappy compared to the Bay Area or Boston.
I wouldn't say that Atlanta is backwards. I am only confident of saying that a perception of unfriendliness to Asians and foreign-born people prevents many people from those groups from moving there.
So, I'm open to being proven wrong here. And I'm having a hard time finding any hard data either for or against this. Is there really a perception among Asians and foreigners that Atlanta is an unfriendly place?
The closest thing I can find to data is demographics. But the size of a population is only somewhat correlated to tolerance. I can find some polls but they don't have much data. Any other thoughts?
There are stop overs and other accumulated delays. In some cases (depending on the route you end up with) there are additional security checkpoints.
For instance, JFK to Nagoya (Japan) to Manila means arriving early at JFK, going through security, then flying to Nagoya, where you again have to go through security and then wait 2-3 hours, then on to Manila. Remember, delays accumulate.
I lived in Atlanta for 10 years (went to school at Georgia Tech). I moved there when the population just hit 2MM; now its 5.5MM!!...back in the day when you would expect it to be _more_ racist.
I am now married to a Chinese lady. I've lived in Shanghai the last 9 years. I wouldn't worry at all abut moving my wife and 4-year-old "hybrid" son to Atlanta. Neither would I worry about moving them to my very small home town in south Georgia.
I lived in Atlanta for 7 years. (went to school at Georgia Tech too). I moved there when the population hit 3M. Honestly, I did not like the startup scene there, I moved out and now live in the Bay Area. I'm an Asian American and there really is no diversity unless you live on Buford Hwy... at least nothing compared to living in SF/Bay Area. You don't notice the racism there until you move out. People here in the bay area don't really care where you're from or what's your background. It's incredibly refreshing!
If you're white, you probably don't notice the racism. If you're not white, I'm sure you'd notice it. The African American population in Atlanta often think that all Asians living there came from oversees.
It makes sense that someone who has lived in Georgia wouldn't mind moving back there. What about the Chinese people you have met in Shanghai? Would they move to Atlanta? Those are the people that must be convinced in order to make Atlanta into the next Silicon Valley.
I don't think shanghai folk would be happy anywhere but shanghai ;).
I do not feel that Atlanta has all the requirements of a Silicon Valley. Atlanta does lack diversity on that level. But as for racism and for the ability for someone to be an entrepreneur? I think its ok if your the type to go out and find the people that you fit in with. I started my first company in Atlanta during college and did well. I'm not moving back to Atlanta because its too big for me; as are Shanghai and Silicon Valley. I've decided I like small towns: fresh air, less than 5 minute commute to anywhere in town, etc...
If you are a small internet company, self funded, and don't expect to ever be able to get VC, small towns may have the stability and peace required to go the distance. But thats all off topic ;). fyi, I'm in Tepoztlan, Mexico at the moment, arrived 3 days ago. I needed a few months out of Shanghai after all those years. So I'm sitting in a quite garden next the mountain and getting more quality work done than I have in quite some time...peace ;)
I do agree that if someone is seeking out a tolerant place, they're probably going to rule out the South based on the way it's typically caricatured. California has the opposite reputation, though I don't think it really deserves it.
..having lived in both SFO for years and Atl for years, my view is that CA is much more racist if you're not white or Asian and that's just a fact...the "good ole boys" club is alive and growing in the Atl however...
Yeah, I'm Indian. Yeah I'm American too (born and raised in Kentucky).
Is there prejudice in the world? Yeah, sure.
Have I experienced prejudice/racism? Of course - and not just in Georgia or Kentucky but all over the world.
Does it matter one bit (at least to me)? Nope.
Anyone that shows prejudice (based on race or otherwise) is someone I don't need to be friends with, do business with, or interact with. I've never felt like a customer wouldn't buy because of some racial prejudice or an investor wouldn't invest because of the same. If they did, would I even want to do business with someone so small minded? No, I wouldn't.
Starting a company is hard. It doesn't matter if you don't have one hurdle or another - there are a lot of obstacles to a successful liquidity event. Entrepreneurship isn't a path where success is guaranteed. If it were, everyone would do it.
So my point is this - sure, prejudice may exist and you may think it will hinder you from succeeding. So what? No one said this was going to be easy. On the contrary, the large potential rewards upon success all but determine that it will be very, very difficult to achieve (go read an economics book if you don't get the reasoning as to why).
So just get to work, start your company, and be successful. This stuff is all noise and if it derails you - you need to become a better entrepreneur/leader rather than complain that someone kept you from succeeding.