What Entrepreneurs Need to Know September 28, 2007, 11:01AM EST text size: TT

The Secret of Ning's Success

by David E. Gumpert

From the Get-Over-It Department: Facebook Could Have Stayed in Boston

A Boston Globe columnist's recent lament that Facebook and its $6 billion of value could have been the Hub's star prompts a venture capitalist's ire. "Let's face the facts," says David Aronoff of IDG Ventures in his blog. "We are not Silicon Valley, we never have been and never will be. The Red Sox eventually won the World Series (hopefully again this year), but the tech economy is not the pennant race and Silicon Valley is not the Yankees. There is a volume and scale out there that we just don't have and personally I am sick of looking in the rearview mirror for the multitude of historical reasons. Facebook didn't happen in Boston. But EMC (EMC), Akamai (AKAM), Genzyme (GENZ), Netezza (NZ), Equalogic, and a host of other world class companies did."

 

David E. Gumpert covers business/health issues and also writes the biweekly What Entrepreneurs Need to Know column.