Hawaii (still in the USA) is great in that it's a warm place, but the cost of living is high. However, great hackers in Hawaii cost 50-75% what they would in S

Hawaii (still in the USA) is great in that it's a warm place, but the cost of living is high. However, great hackers in Hawaii cost 50-75% what they would in Silicon Valley. A lot of intelligent, quality people move back here after going to school at fairly good schools (many go to USC,UCLA,Berkeley,Stanford - a smaller amount Harvard and MIT before returning home for cultural/family reasons). I know this because I left Los Angeles for a 30% pay cut to come home to Hawaii. I get paid less, but I can walk around in my tank top all year. Call it an extreme sunshine tax. The highest profile startup we've had recently are the guys that built Sprout Builder. ilovephotos.com (Blue Lava Technologies) is an amazing product that I'm not sure I'm allowed to discuss, and also built out of Hawaii. They also have a few incubators/innovation centers where you can get cheap office space (and cheap everything else). They're nice offices,, but subsidized considerably by the local government specifically to spur more innovation here.