This morning, I awoke to a tweet from Blank Label's Fan Bi that said, "Boston actually getting better for first-timers or still more noise than signal?" which was addressed to many of the young entrepreneurs.  It got me thinking, and so I'd like to highlight why I think Boston IS getting better for first timers (but perhaps still has much work to do).

If you saw David Cancel's presentation at Angel Bootcamp or read Healy Jones's recent post on how founders in Boston are "Students who stay," you know that the issue of student retention is on the mind of a number of members of our community.   In honor of Scott Kirsner's "Innovation Month" and his challenge to local bloggers to write about "something that is happening -- or should be happening -- here to make the innovation scene in New England even better?"  I'd like to share how I think we can dramatically improve our retention of students: Hire them.

All too often I hear people mutter, “It’s just so tough to get funding here,” or “Our startup is doing well, but people just don’t ‘get it’ here,” or “We’re going to have to move to Silicon Valley if we want to ever make it.” Most of the time, they’re wrong. Here is my un-scholarly perspective from my experience after seeing over 400 new startup ventures launched in over 40 cities.