A little friendly competition is healthy, after all it is in our human nature to compete. In fact, competition is what drives us to be better, to look at things differently and make them better, in short, competition is good. There are rules to every competition, whether documented, unspoken or just understood. Trouble rears it’s ugly head when people take off the gloves, start breaking the rules and doing things their own way to either get ahead or put their competition down. Now that does not seem cool, does it?

In the event that you are not an avid Crunch head (just coined that term, kind of like it, reminds me of dead head, but completely different) um, I mean read TechCrunch on a regular basis, we at Mixx (let me just say how awesome it feels to say we at Mixx) had the pleasure of a nice write up by Mr. Arrington over the holiday weekend. Of course all the naysayers were out in full effect with their negative comments, but there were a lot of great comments as well, and to all of you I say thanks. There seems to be a good amount of people that are frustrated with the current social news sites for whatever reasons, and Mixx provides them an alternative, and we welcome anyone who leaves those sites or anyone who comes from where ever, we welcome you all. We recognize that all the other social news sites are our competition, and because of that we strive to get better each day, to listen to our users responses and needs and try to fulfill them however possible. This is all within the rules of engagement, and we will stick to it.

The game becomes unfair when your competition does something that is against the spirit of competition. That happened to us today, there was an article surfaced on how to administer a DDOS attack on us, and it was even being voted up. That is not cool in any way, shape or form. The game takes a bad turn with these kinds of actions, but it only stays that way if we or anyone in this situation follows suit. It is safe to say that we will steer things back on course from our side and I just hope that our competition does the same.

So after months of planning, over 165 people signing up, the DC Startup Weekend is almost upon us. The final details are being ironed out, location, times, etc. but have no fear, it will go off without a hitch (at least that is the plan). We are starting this Friday night and will finish Sunday night, 11:59 pm come hell or high water.
We are going to be live streaming the event via ustream.tv, so if you are interested in keeping up to date on what we are doing, you will be able to watch the stream. You can watch it here on this blog, as well as ustream.tv and also at the DC Startup Weekend blog.

We will also be blogging the event throughout the weekend, and you can follow along at the DC Startup Weekend blog as well. If you have not signed up, it is not to late. If not, stayed tuned to find out what we come up with, it should be exciting times.

I know it has been over a week since Paul Graham spoke at the FOWA conference in London and basically told everyone why it makes sense for startups to be located in a startup hub city (basically in Silicon Valley, but he does tip his hat to other “hubs” in the US).

He sure did seem to rub a lot of people the wrong way by his speak, so much that at the end of his talk one of the organizers of the event got up on stage and delivered his retort. I understand where Paul was coming from when he stated that startups are better served to be located in one of the startup hub cities, but that does not mean that is the only way that a startup will survive. It is a little self righteous for him or anyone else to think that the only way to make it big is to be in one of those cities, there are plenty of successful startups operating in non “startup hub” cities (Feedburner, Threadless, Scrapblog, Moo just to name a few). I, and I am sure countless others, are tired of hearing how the only way for your startup to work is to be in a hub city, for many, being in one of those cities is just not desirable for whatever reason.

Success is like beauty, it is in the eyes of the beholder. Many startups are started to be a lifestyle business, not to be the next YouTube. If that is your intent, being in a non startup hub city is completely fine. Even if you want to be the next YouTube, it does not mean that you have to uproot and make the pilgrimage to the Valley, it just means that you may need to work a little harder to get where you want to be, which in the long run, may make you and your company much better as a result.

There is no denying that the Valley and Boston have an abundance of all the right ingredients to make a startup successful (good universities, talented individuals, investors and money), but those alone to not guarantee success. There are plenty of other cities that have the same ingredients, take a look at what Lance Weatherby has to say about Atlanta and you will understand (Lance, BTW, is a fellow startup weekend organizer of mine. He in Atlanta, me in DC.).

Bottom line, if you are running a startup and you are not in a “startup hub” city, it does not mean that you will not make it. You will have to work harder for it, but in the end, it will be that much sweeter.