Confessions from a Silicon Prairie Start-up Founder

By Christina DesMarais |  @salubriousdish   | Dec 5, 2011

Launching a tech start-up outside the VC-obsessed Silicon Valley and New York City comes with a catch-22. On the one hand, in quieter places it’s easier to focus on building an actual business and frankly, not everyone wants to move to the coasts. Yet lesser-known locales can be risk averse and less tolerant of failure, even though with missteps come learning and improvement.

Michael Noble knows this dilemma well.

While originally from Minnesota, Noble spent six years in New York where he was part of the group that launched LimeWire, one of the first peer-to-peer file sharing networks. Before that he was VP of business development for wireless networking company Xanboo, which was acquired by AT&T in 2010.

Now he’s back in the land of 10,000 lakes launching Nitch, a B2B social platform that brings businesses and vendors from various vertical markets—or Nitches—together.

Read more…

http://www.inc.com/christina-desmarais/confessions-from-a-silicon-prairie-startup-founder.html