Move Over, Silicon Valley

Baby Bills, Jeffs, and Sergeys—start-ups founded by veterans of Microsoft, Amazon, and Google and nicknamed for their founders—are sprouting up around Seattle as the city becomes the next hot technology incubator, the New York Times reports. With the University of Washington playing the role Stanford does in Silicon Valley, and Amazon and Microsoft drawing tech talent, young companies are cross-fertilizing.

"The start-up ecosystem is vibrant and growing," says one serial entrepreneur. VC investment in the area has more than tripled in the last 12 years, to about $1 billion annually. And the famously rainy city has one advantage over Silicon Valley: “People aren’t distracted by too much sunshine. They sit in their offices or garages and get creative.“ (More Silicon Valley stories.)