Assuming your designs are printable, why not test out some of your designs on a community like Threadless? Allows you to "launch early and iterate" and get early "user" feedback with minimal financial risk. It'll allow you to gauge the popularity of different designs without having to actually have the clothes made.
As there's already an established community around Threadless, it might also be a good way to build an initial following for your brand/style.
Great thread! I have worked (and continue to work) for a handful of startup-type companies in Liverpool (NW England). I don't have a wide enough experience of European cities to say it's the best place to start a business, but it's a great place to live and relatively cheap to rent office space and similar. Historically there's been a good amount of public sector funding available (although whether that will continue under the coalition government remains to be seen!), but of course there isn't an "VC ecosystem" equivalent to that of London.
All that said, there are amazing, interesting and fun people here doing cool things with tech, and there's the beginnings of a great scene. I love it :-)
But my main reason for posting was to ask: is there a directory of some sort compiling answers to questions like this for cities globally, detailing the sort of recruitment and funding opportunities available, as well as what sort of startups are already based there? Almost like a "Crunchbase for cities"...might have to think about knocking such a thing together if it doesn't already exist!
I'm a big fan of this, mainly because of the top 5 filter, but also because I tend to use Twitter as a centralised hub for much of my media consumption, rather than visiting different websites, so it suits this use.
I have a "reading material" Twitter list set up, including @newsycombinator, and I regularly scan this for this to add to Instapaper, which I then generally read when travelling.
Admittedly, the problem with this is that it means I'm a less active participant in the community here than I'd like to be.
Fair point - in fact, I suggested on my blog that it may be a bit simplistic (or a confusion of correlation/causation) to simply say "my blog is successful because I stopped trying to make it successful": http://ashotofjd.com/post/168062040/marco-i-now-have-a-decen...
DailyBooth could easily switch on anonymity - there's nothing technically difficult about that. But 4chan has a culture that allows for anonymous posts, which is why I think the context of a community is often more important in defining a service that technology.
Admittedly, individual feeds do change the way users behave a lot...but I'd argue that this feeds into changing the context that the tech is place in ;-)
I partly disagree. Of course, networking, contacts and "who you know" are important. And DailyBooth were undoubtedly helped in getting TC coverage by the YC connection. But that's PR, which is different to creating a compelling product in and of itself, which is where I believe context and positioning (eg. link shortener for bacon) is important.
