I'd add that one of the token mistakes out of towners make when setting up shop in "D.C." is to take the name literally. For example, if your target is in the Fed/Defense space, D.C. is paradoxically probably not the best place to set up an office. Good luck getting people from McLean, Reston or Springfield or even Ft. Meade to want to come to a meeting at your office, no/expensive parking, mass transit doesn't work for most places outside of D.C. (and no bureaucrat worth their departmental budget is going to take it anyway).
The Baltimore/D.C. metro area should be considered as a whole (about 10 million people!) and for the obvious benefits of being near your customers or for the synergy effects of being near like-businesses, you have to get to know the area and should setup shop in those places if you can. Nobody in the Fed/Defense Space is impressed that you set up an office in a trendy D.C. neighborhood.
Want to work high tech? The Dulles Tech corridor is where you should look. That's Virginia and goes 30 miles away from the city. It's the Silicon Valley of the East and it's slowly getting setup on the Metro system. Want to work bio? You want Southern Maryland.
I've lived in the D.C. area for a very long time and I see this mistake repeated again and again. D.C. means the entire region. D.C. (the city) is a very different thing. It also means that you're constantly dealing with the three territories here, VA, MD and D.C. and things are different in each of them, even if nominally they're one big area.
The other one I see is that everybody from out of the area underestimates the intensity and vagueness of D.C. traffic. I've seen a long list of West Coasters, who think they understand traffic from around the Bay Area slowly slip into madness when it comes to facing and dealing with D.C. traffic. It means that you can't setup a long string of meetings all over the area and expect that Google Maps's estimate of 15 minutes will make any kind of sense. On one day it'll be right, and the next it'll turn into an hour and a half slog and you'll blow through your next 3 meetings just trying to get to them.
D.C. is also very much perception based. You're either with the in-crowd or you're an outsider. And these two mistakes mark you as an outsider, a rookie and not a player to very many of the big organizations you might be wanting to do business with.
The Baltimore/D.C. metro area should be considered as a whole (about 10 million people!) and for the obvious benefits of being near your customers or for the synergy effects of being near like-businesses, you have to get to know the area and should setup shop in those places if you can. Nobody in the Fed/Defense Space is impressed that you set up an office in a trendy D.C. neighborhood.
Want to work high tech? The Dulles Tech corridor is where you should look. That's Virginia and goes 30 miles away from the city. It's the Silicon Valley of the East and it's slowly getting setup on the Metro system. Want to work bio? You want Southern Maryland.
I've lived in the D.C. area for a very long time and I see this mistake repeated again and again. D.C. means the entire region. D.C. (the city) is a very different thing. It also means that you're constantly dealing with the three territories here, VA, MD and D.C. and things are different in each of them, even if nominally they're one big area.
The other one I see is that everybody from out of the area underestimates the intensity and vagueness of D.C. traffic. I've seen a long list of West Coasters, who think they understand traffic from around the Bay Area slowly slip into madness when it comes to facing and dealing with D.C. traffic. It means that you can't setup a long string of meetings all over the area and expect that Google Maps's estimate of 15 minutes will make any kind of sense. On one day it'll be right, and the next it'll turn into an hour and a half slog and you'll blow through your next 3 meetings just trying to get to them.
D.C. is also very much perception based. You're either with the in-crowd or you're an outsider. And these two mistakes mark you as an outsider, a rookie and not a player to very many of the big organizations you might be wanting to do business with.