Cities and Ambition (2008)
<i>You might think that if you had enough strength of mind to do great things, you&#x27;d be able to transcend your environment. Where you live should make at most a couple percent difference.</i><p>This is exactly what I thought out of college. &quot;I&#x27;m a product engineer! I can work from anywhere. I&#x27;m going to move back to my hometown and turn the rust belt economy around with a billion dollar startup!&quot;<p>As it turns out, I didn&#x27;t have the talent to start such a business by myself (and based on my knowledge of startup history, no one does).<p>And that&#x27;s why this essay nails it.<p><i>In a hundred subtle ways, the city sends you a message: you could do more; you should try harder.</i><p>YOU may be a self motivated person, regardless of environment. But your founder may not be. Your first ten employees may not be. Your investors and vendors and strategic partners may not be.<p>When any of these stakeholders hang out with their friends in the rust belt, they hear depressing stories. They start to look at success like it&#x27;s impossible, and they come back to work the next day less energized and less motivated.<p>Or maybe they&#x27;ve got a good circle of friends, but not an <i>ambitious</i> circle of friends. They love their friends, so they stay out with them a little later, sleep a little less, end up a little less productive the next day and leave work earlier to go meet them. Same thing goes for a family, but with the added responsibility.<p>This isn&#x27;t to say that friends are bad or families will hold you back. In my experience, good friendships and a loving, functional family are better than any business success.<p>The point is that your environment <i>will</i> affect your ambitions - even if you never needed help feeling ambitious. At some point or another you&#x27;ll need help for <i>something</i>, and if your city doesn&#x27;t drive ambition in that direction, you&#x27;ll have to work that much harder to motivate the help you need.