If you want to make movies, go to Hollywood.
If you want to make musicals, go to Broadway.
If you want to make apps, go to Appsterdam.

What has made the Valley successful is not funding, but engineers. Anyone who visits northern California, perhaps for WWDC, comes away feeling tremendously inspired from being surrounded by people who do the same thing they do—people with the same mindset, the same attitude, the same values.

Simultaneously nurtured and stifled in this environment is our movement: the movement of artisanship in software, the movement of apps, hand-crafted not with the intention of making a successful exit, but of making a quality product.

Every industry finds itself in this state after its initial explosion. The next step is for things to cool and contract into something sustainable and interesting. What is needed is a center of gravity for things to coalesce around. What if we could take the best part of the Valley—everyone together at the same table—and move it to a better environment?

That place is Amsterdam.

If you’ve been to a conference, you’ve probably thought how nice it would be if everyday life could be like that—being surrounded by peers, able to get help solving a hard problem, then get accolades for doing so. There is a gestalt to sitting face to face with a group you just don’t get over the wire. With Appsterdam, our community is not just a nice idea, but a nice place. « less