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New Seattle Mayor Ed Murray wants to have a ‘more robust’ partnership with startups

The Mayor recently chatted with Geekwire’s Taylor Soper about the future of the Startup Seattle Initiative under his administration. In the interview, Mayor Murray expresses his interesting in beefing up resources to the program but under the condition that the program’s intent and goals need to be made more explicit. Following is an excerpt from […]

Startup SeattleThe Mayor recently chatted with Geekwire’s Taylor Soper about the future of the Startup Seattle Initiative under his administration. In the interview, Mayor Murray expresses his interesting in beefing up resources to the program but under the condition that the program’s intent and goals need to be made more explicit. Following is an excerpt from the interview, but you can read the whole thing here.

The mayor is also bullish on the work coming out of the University of Washington, a place that could soon become a new thriving startup hub.

“I think that the UW and the city together have a real opportunity to really make this a place where people come to do startups,” Murray said.

Murray made it clear that he doesn’t like “the old model,” which he described as cities and states stealing companies from each other by offering attractive incentives like tax breaks.

“That is the losing model,” he said. “You don’t gain any money off it. How you gain revenue and gain jobs is by actually incubating your own startups — companies that choose to be in this city. We want our startups to be home grown, and we want people to move here who have good ideas, or for the people already here who have good ideas, we want them to have access to more resources.”