5 ms·

I really love Portland, and I'm sure it's a great new home for BankSimple, but I am a little shocked that a company would move to a city where literally everyon

by ry0ohki 15y ago

I really love Portland, and I'm sure it's a great new home for BankSimple, but I am a little shocked that a company would move to a city where literally everyone in the company would have to be relocated. I've seen companies move to SF or NY before because of VC raised, but this is almost the opposite!

skrebbel 15y ago
Well, I heard that my milkman's aunt heard from a friend that Alex Payne said he would quit unless everybody moved over to become his neighbour!
- al3x 15y ago
  Cute. But, actually, if my co-founders had decided to move the company to another city entirely, I would have happily moved. Portland happens to be a good fit for what we're doing, particular from a customer service hiring perspective.
  - skrebbel 15y ago
    In fact, you made me wonder: how the hell do you determine that one city is better than another for "customer service hiring"? I don't imagine there's indexes for these sorts of things. Or education programmes for customer service people, at all. Or a single "best profile", even?
    - pbreit 15y ago
      Maybe it's simple experience and observation? Do those still count anymore? Does everything have to be written up in BusinessWeek before it becomes assertable?
darushimo 15y ago
" It already has a small, five-person development office in Portland's Pearl District, led by Payne, who moved here last year. " - http://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/index.ssf/2011/08/promising_ny_startup_banksimple_moves_hq_to_portla.html http://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/index.ssf/2011/08/p...
- jvoorhis 15y ago
  I have no idea where they are now, but we were neighbors once: http://blog.phpfog.com/2011/07/25/want-to-be-the-next-php-fog-pie-is-accepting-applications/ http://blog.phpfog.com/2011/07/25/want-to-be-the-next-php-fo... Before we were at PIE, our company worked at cafes. I guess you could say we scaled from our home offices to a multi-tenant office to dedicated office space.
pchristensen 15y ago
There are clues there: 1) they wanted everyone to be in once place 2) they're hiring a lot of people, especially customer service. Customer service in NYC or SF would be prohibitively expensive, so if they want to be all in one place, they would have to move anyway. This is no different than Zappos being in Las Vegas or Groupon being in Chicago (I think Zappos relocated). Personnel costs when you have 50 employees per hacker become a big deal. Portland has a ton of skilled, educated people and high unemployment, so they're going to get a lot of bank for their buck.
- al3x 15y ago
  You got it.
  - mattmanser 15y ago
    Probably worth putting who you are in your profile, at least one of your other answers has been killed, possibly because it wasn't obvious you were answering for the company and it's a one worder: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2921563 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2921563
- Lewisham 15y ago
  I wonder how well Vegas is doing for Zappos. Portland, from all accounts, is beginning to look like a city-sized SOMA startup scene, and the city's personality certainly jives with the common stereotype of the hipster startup developer. Vegas is certainly ideally situated for a place that wants a big warehouse, but I wonder how well Zappos are attracting tech talent. I can imagine Vegas might be a fun place to be, or it might be hell. I'd try it out for a year. It's certainly very different.
al3x 15y ago
We don't have to relocate "literally everyone" in the company. We have myself (one of the co-founders), three engineers, and a project manager here in Portland already. A couple of other people planned on moving for personal reasons in the next few months. Still, there are a number of people in the company who are uprooting their lives in NYC, SF, and elsewhere, and we really appreciate that they were willing to do so.
- ry0ohki 15y ago
  Ah somehow I missed you had people in Portland on the first read. It makes much more sense especially if some of the founders are located there.

by ry0ohki 15y ago

skrebbel 15y ago

Well, I heard that my milkman's aunt heard from a friend that Alex Payne said he would quit unless everybody moved over to become his neighbour!

al3x 15y ago
Cute. But, actually, if my co-founders had decided to move the company to another city entirely, I would have happily moved. Portland happens to be a good fit for what we're doing, particular from a customer service hiring perspective.
- skrebbel 15y ago
  In fact, you made me wonder: how the hell do you determine that one city is better than another for "customer service hiring"? I don't imagine there's indexes for these sorts of things. Or education programmes for customer service people, at all. Or a single "best profile", even?
  - pbreit 15y ago
    Maybe it's simple experience and observation? Do those still count anymore? Does everything have to be written up in BusinessWeek before it becomes assertable?

darushimo 15y ago

" It already has a small, five-person development office in Portland's Pearl District, led by Payne, who moved here last year. " - http://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/index.ssf/2011/08/promising_ny_startup_banksimple_moves_hq_to_portla.html http://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/index.ssf/2011/08/p...

jvoorhis 15y ago
I have no idea where they are now, but we were neighbors once: http://blog.phpfog.com/2011/07/25/want-to-be-the-next-php-fog-pie-is-accepting-applications/ http://blog.phpfog.com/2011/07/25/want-to-be-the-next-php-fo... Before we were at PIE, our company worked at cafes. I guess you could say we scaled from our home offices to a multi-tenant office to dedicated office space.

pchristensen 15y ago

There are clues there: 1) they wanted everyone to be in once place 2) they're hiring a lot of people, especially customer service. Customer service in NYC or SF would be prohibitively expensive, so if they want to be all in one place, they would have to move anyway. This is no different than Zappos being in Las Vegas or Groupon being in Chicago (I think Zappos relocated). Personnel costs when you have 50 employees per hacker become a big deal. Portland has a ton of skilled, educated people and high unemployment, so they're going to get a lot of bank for their buck.

al3x 15y ago
You got it.
- mattmanser 15y ago
  Probably worth putting who you are in your profile, at least one of your other answers has been killed, possibly because it wasn't obvious you were answering for the company and it's a one worder: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2921563 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2921563
Lewisham 15y ago
I wonder how well Vegas is doing for Zappos. Portland, from all accounts, is beginning to look like a city-sized SOMA startup scene, and the city's personality certainly jives with the common stereotype of the hipster startup developer. Vegas is certainly ideally situated for a place that wants a big warehouse, but I wonder how well Zappos are attracting tech talent. I can imagine Vegas might be a fun place to be, or it might be hell. I'd try it out for a year. It's certainly very different.

al3x 15y ago

We don't have to relocate "literally everyone" in the company. We have myself (one of the co-founders), three engineers, and a project manager here in Portland already. A couple of other people planned on moving for personal reasons in the next few months. Still, there are a number of people in the company who are uprooting their lives in NYC, SF, and elsewhere, and we really appreciate that they were willing to do so.

ry0ohki 15y ago
Ah somehow I missed you had people in Portland on the first read. It makes much more sense especially if some of the founders are located there.