Decentralizing Indonesia’s tech scene. What’s your city doing?

This is a friendly challenge for tech startups in Indonesia’s second tier and satellite cities.

There seems to be no dispute that Jakarta is Indonesia’s tech nucleus – the warm light which all the archipelago’s startup stakeholders huddle around. The Big Durian, with more than 10 million inner city and metro area residents, houses the vast majority of the nation’s VC firms. The unofficial development of “Slipicon Valley” is proof that all these investors, co-working spaces, incubators, and accelerators are even further siloing up in the capital city. If you’re running an online media or business-to-business startup and you’re not in Jakarta, you run the all-too-real risk of becoming irrelevant (save Yogyakarta-based Hipwee). This is a serious problem because the archipelago is always packaged as a market with vast potential, one which has 250 million consumers. So why just think about Jakarta?

People often say Bali is the nation’s secondary startup hub, but if you take an honest look, you’ll quickly conclude that it’s not. I don’t mean to be hard on our beautiful island getaway. Perhaps it’s the slower pace of life or the fact that Bali attracts primarily expat digital nomads, but it’s a little hard to take the entrepreneurs there seriously. The island’s “decelerators” at first seem like an awesome concept, but then after you talk to a few, it becomes apparent that they more just organized vacation packages for stressed out foreign businessmen who want build sandcastles and feel productive about it. Of course there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s a business execution just like anything else, but perhaps less relevant to building Indonesia tech startup ecosystem. I don’t want to fully discredit Bali. There are actually a few really solid companies to come out of the tourist destination. These are names like OLX (formerly Tokobagus) and one could also argue a compelling case for Andrea Loubier’s Mailbird.

Some locals may tell you Bandung is rising up as a tech hub, namely for the developer community. But alas, all the talented talent from Bandung inevitably ends up flocking to Jakarta when they’re ready to get serious about building or joining a tech venture. People like Adryan Hafizh from Bandung’s Kolaborasi are sure to contest this. What are your thoughts guys?

Despite its status as Indonesia’s second largest city, Surabaya is light years behind Jakarta and even the other second tier cities in terms of mature startups, knowledge sharing, and an overall tech community. A local accelerator Start Surabaya exists, but I’ll leave it up to the commenters to tell us if it’s actually on-point or not (Disclosure: My permanent address is in Surabaya and I have nothing but love for the City of Heroes).

I bring these points up because I believe decentralizing Indonesia’s tech scene can only bring great things. Hopefully Indonesia’s 4G networks will make connectivity less of an issue. All the techies in Bandung, Yogyakarta, Solo, Semarang, Palembang, Medan, Bali, and more, let’s hear what you guys have in mind for bringing more tech talent and venture capital interest to your cities. Basically, tell us what makes your cities awesome.

Lead image by Abdul Rahman.