Lee Hower lived the quintessential Internet start-up life as an early employee at PayPal and part of the founding team of LinkedIn, the social network for professionals. But three years ago, Hower left Silicon Valley’s heady entrepreneurial scene for what might seem the outer reaches of the tech universe. Last week, when Hower–now a venture capitalist–mingled with entrepreneurs hatching new Web sites, tech company founders looking to hire and about 100 self-identified geeks, he wasn’t in Palo Alto, Calif., or even Boston–he was in an art gallery in downtown Providence, R.I.

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