Joe Procopio: Introducing a new, re-imagined Startup Show

Editor’s note: Veteran Triangle entrepreneur, blogger and author Joe Procopio says he spent the summer thinking about how to make Teaching Startup better. Here’s an update.

DURHAM – I don’t want The Startup Show or Teaching Startup itself to be a local thing. I’ve been pretty adamant about that ever since ExitEvent, my last startup, couldn’t get out of the local scene and expand nationally. But I also believe there are concepts we talk about on a local level that can inform at a national level.

What works for Raleigh and Durham can work for Des Moines, Mobile, Syracuse, even Austin.

In this first-ever “local” episode of the now rebranded The Startup Show, Jon Colgan, Andy Roth and I (no Chop this week), talk about everything from beer to religion to creative writing to west coast money and how they can influence and impact local economies, and how entrepreneurs can and should be at the heart of this.

The simple truth is that West Coast investors have so much opportunity on the West Coast, and the proximity makes their effort so easy and simple, that any founder outside of Silicon Valley should probably be looking at West Coast VC as a last resort, not a primary goal.

Outside of the Valley, startups need to be customer-first, revenue-driven, crowdfunded, kickstarted, whatever it takes to get the idea into execution. The next Facebook or Snapchat or Etherium probably isn’t coming from Raleigh or Durham or Syracuse or Mobile, but there’s a good chance, a great chance, that your startup can use different means to reach the same level of success.

Fire up episode 5.1, lovingly titled Why West Coast VCs Won’t Fund Your Business, and let’s talk about it.