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Or the costs are driving potential founders out of founding. If you double your monthly costs, you double the amount you need to save in order to have enough ru
by ThrustVectoring 9y ago
Or the costs are driving potential founders out of founding. If you double your monthly costs, you double the amount you need to save in order to have enough runway to "two guys in a basement" your way into enough traction for funding. Plus you need more funding for getting enough roadway for employees and an actual business.
Maybe I'm far more mobile than others, but I'm really surprised that there isn't a wave of people trying to poach childless engineers into moving 1-4 hours out of SF to set up shop. Reno, in particular - it's 4 hours out, has actually reasonable real estate prices, and no state income tax. Maybe getting funding requires the VCs to make the trip to your office, and you're not able to just have your leadership make the trip out to SF?
- dmode 9y agoIf that was viable, people would move to Tracy or Stockton or Davis which are nearer to SF than Reno and cheaper. That's not how things work though.
- epicureanideal 9y agoBut why isn't it viable? I don't understand.
- goseeastarwar 9y agoVC's like their investments nearby and very few people would choose to live in those cities, in particular childless engineers. It's the same reason Twitter, even though they threatened to move their office from SF to Brisbane several years ago, absolutely would never have followed through with it. Too many of their employees would have quit immediately, and we're talking about a town that's 20 minutes away, let alone 2 hours.
- dmode 9y agoToo add to that, repeat founders often live in the area where they start their companies. Also, if you want to poach away a top talent in a niche area, chances are they are unlikely to move far from where they are currently leaving. Example, easier for Tesla to poach from Apple vs. GM to poach from Apple
- didibus 9y agoI find normally its the childless engineers who don't want to move out the city, because that's where the fun is at. I think that's why this isn't happening.
- vedanta 9y agoNevada is too different, the combination of non-enforceable non-competes and the nice weather can be duplicated elsewhere in CA easiest, and this is happening. If your state has big corporate HQs forget about getting non-enforceable non-competes.
- ThrustVectoring 9y agoWouldn't CA companies/employees not get pushed to sign unenforceable non-competes (because they're in CA, so it doesn't help the employer any, so they don't push for it in contracts)? So if you're poaching from CA anyhow...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- vedanta 9y agoIt's the employees' choice, take a lifetime of lower earnings or not, everything else being the same.
- ghaff 9y agoNo one is forcing you as a company to make employees sign a non-compete, enforceable or otherwise. I've generally lived in states where non-competes are enforceable and I've signed exactly one.
- vedanta 9y agoIt's not about you or a company, once the market tolerates non-competes, employers will use them for any sort of a knowledge-based position. People will shift jobs less, wages will lower, followed by other economic effects of slightly lower wages.
- s73ver 9y agoI think they're speaking from the perspective of founders who, until they start the company, do have day jobs somewhere. In California, there's no issue, but in other states with enforceable non-competes, that can be a pretty big hinderance to starting the company.
- hkmurakami 9y agoOnce you have a social circle is hard to move. Not many People are open to completely uprooting to an area where they have zero friends or family