6 ms·

I hope more startups move to Texas... housing cost are way too high in SV.

by ttrreeww 14y ago

coolsunglasses 14y ago
I, (and my next startup), are possibly moving to Austin soon. So there's one for you.
- ttrreeww 14y ago
  Thank you! I hope it's the start of a new trend. Google fiber is just the icing on the cake!
- michaelochurch 14y ago
  What's your next startup?
  - coolsunglasses 14y ago
    I'm not sure if you're curious or about to make an example of me.
    - michaelochurch 14y ago
      Curious. You can tell me offline, or not at all. I'm pretty excited to see the growth of a strong startup scene outside of NYC + SF. I feel like VC-istan is played out and I'm trying to get a coherent feel for what's next.
      - coolsunglasses 14y ago
        Normally I'd prefer a B2B/B2D type thing for practical reasons, but it's a consumer fashion thing. Discovery and recommendation oriented, designed to get the rather large percentage of the young population that isn't dressing as well as they could on board. Especially young professional-age men. It's an itch-scratching problem that is dear to me. Even if it doesn't develop into a sustainable business it's worth it to me to attack. I'm in Mountain View right now, consulting after my stint as a non-founder CTO. Not going non-founder route again. I'm bootstrapping at least initially so I get more utility from cheap land and nice people than I do accessibility of seed money.
        michaelochurch 14y ago
        Normally I'd prefer a B2B/B2D type thing for practical reasons, but it's a consumer fashion thing. Interesting. That seems more like a New York startup, but COL would really be out of your favor out here, and you'd be competing with finance on salaries. Discovery and recommendation oriented, designed to get the rather large percentage of the young population that isn't dressing as well as they could on board. Especially young professional-age men. That's a great concept. I think a lot of us are late to realize that how you dress (especially for work) matters. I didn't know how to dress until I met my wife. I hope that it works out. I'm in Mountain View right now, consulting after my stint as a non-founder CTO. Not going non-founder route again. I hear you on that. I feel like startup founders overestimate the degree to which they've "de-risked" the business, mainly as an excuse to take 10x the equity. In truth, a company with 18 months to live, no free-standing reputation, and that fires without severance is not de-risked at all.
michaelochurch 14y ago
I'm starting to think the balance is going to shift to lower-COL areas. This is based on my experience having been on the hiring side. It's not about salaries because those aren't the major issue. The COL difference is minor in comparison to the execution risks. In fact, the traditional reason why startups "had to be" in NYC, Boston, and San Francisco is job-market latency. Yes, you can find great engineers elsewhere, but for some ridiculous purple squirrel query (production experience in the 3 NoSQLs you use) that needs to be filled tomorrow, you need to be in the Valley or New York (due to Wall Street, there's a lot of technical talent, albeit expensive). If you're in Austin, you can find great people but probably not the guy who matches your purple squirrel query exactly. That said, a place like NYC has the urban dating problem (too many alternatives, so people treat each other like shit). We'd write great offers to people only to have them picked off based on minutiae. We were ridiculously picky and rejected people for dumb reasons; only fair for them to be. However, I feel like the grow-fast-or-die red-ocean nonsense is played-out and the next wave is going to be in the mid-growth (5-30%/year headcount growth, focus on technical excellence) space which doesn't need to be in the Valley or New York.
- tocomment 14y ago
  What are some promising low COL areas? (I like your thinking by the way)
  - michaelochurch 14y ago
    I can only speak for the U.S. here. * Austin, TX (seems to be the obvious pull-ahead winner in 2013) * Portland, OR (great weather, beautiful, lots of potential) * Madison, WI (near Chicago, great college town, not as cold as people think) * Minneapolis, MN (underrated gem, beautiful, just very cold; I'm told they haven't had a 60+ yet in 2013) * Pittsburgh, PA (CMU is right there; how is it not kicking ass?) * Ann Arbor, MI (another Midwestern gem) * Chicago, IL (if you consider that low-COL) * Toronto, Ontario (ok, not a US city, but I spent a summer there and loved it) Almost none of these would be considered low-COL (they're above 100) and relative to their regions they're quite high, but they're a hell of a lot cheaper than New York or Palo Alto. Oh, one ass-kicking advantage of the low-COL places: people actually want to be lifelong software engineers. In New York, you can't raise a family on a (non-WS quant) engineer's salary. Of course, most of young idiots have this insane dream of having a manager's title and pay (plus real stock options!) which you can get by 27 if you play the politics, but being full-time programmers and just using their magic manager powers to assign themselves the best work. It turns out not to work that way. Poor them... I really think the fact that one can't raise a family out here on an engineer's salary is toxic to the culture. It creates the wrong kind of ambition.

I hope more startups move to Texas... housing cost are way too high in SV.

coolsunglasses 14y ago

I, (and my next startup), are possibly moving to Austin soon. So there's one for you.

ttrreeww 14y ago
Thank you! I hope it's the start of a new trend. Google fiber is just the icing on the cake!
michaelochurch 14y ago
What's your next startup?
- coolsunglasses 14y ago
  I'm not sure if you're curious or about to make an example of me.
  - michaelochurch 14y ago
    Curious. You can tell me offline, or not at all. I'm pretty excited to see the growth of a strong startup scene outside of NYC + SF. I feel like VC-istan is played out and I'm trying to get a coherent feel for what's next.
    - coolsunglasses 14y ago
      Normally I'd prefer a B2B/B2D type thing for practical reasons, but it's a consumer fashion thing. Discovery and recommendation oriented, designed to get the rather large percentage of the young population that isn't dressing as well as they could on board. Especially young professional-age men. It's an itch-scratching problem that is dear to me. Even if it doesn't develop into a sustainable business it's worth it to me to attack. I'm in Mountain View right now, consulting after my stint as a non-founder CTO. Not going non-founder route again. I'm bootstrapping at least initially so I get more utility from cheap land and nice people than I do accessibility of seed money.
      - michaelochurch 14y ago
        Normally I'd prefer a B2B/B2D type thing for practical reasons, but it's a consumer fashion thing. Interesting. That seems more like a New York startup, but COL would really be out of your favor out here, and you'd be competing with finance on salaries. Discovery and recommendation oriented, designed to get the rather large percentage of the young population that isn't dressing as well as they could on board. Especially young professional-age men. That's a great concept. I think a lot of us are late to realize that how you dress (especially for work) matters. I didn't know how to dress until I met my wife. I hope that it works out. I'm in Mountain View right now, consulting after my stint as a non-founder CTO. Not going non-founder route again. I hear you on that. I feel like startup founders overestimate the degree to which they've "de-risked" the business, mainly as an excuse to take 10x the equity. In truth, a company with 18 months to live, no free-standing reputation, and that fires without severance is not de-risked at all.

michaelochurch 14y ago

I'm starting to think the balance is going to shift to lower-COL areas. This is based on my experience having been on the hiring side. It's not about salaries because those aren't the major issue. The COL difference is minor in comparison to the execution risks. In fact, the traditional reason why startups "had to be" in NYC, Boston, and San Francisco is job-market latency. Yes, you can find great engineers elsewhere, but for some ridiculous purple squirrel query (production experience in the 3 NoSQLs you use) that needs to be filled tomorrow, you need to be in the Valley or New York (due to Wall Street, there's a lot of technical talent, albeit expensive). If you're in Austin, you can find great people but probably not the guy who matches your purple squirrel query exactly. That said, a place like NYC has the urban dating problem (too many alternatives, so people treat each other like shit). We'd write great offers to people only to have them picked off based on minutiae. We were ridiculously picky and rejected people for dumb reasons; only fair for them to be. However, I feel like the grow-fast-or-die red-ocean nonsense is played-out and the next wave is going to be in the mid-growth (5-30%/year headcount growth, focus on technical excellence) space which doesn't need to be in the Valley or New York.

tocomment 14y ago
What are some promising low COL areas? (I like your thinking by the way)
- michaelochurch 14y ago
  I can only speak for the U.S. here. * Austin, TX (seems to be the obvious pull-ahead winner in 2013) * Portland, OR (great weather, beautiful, lots of potential) * Madison, WI (near Chicago, great college town, not as cold as people think) * Minneapolis, MN (underrated gem, beautiful, just very cold; I'm told they haven't had a 60+ yet in 2013) * Pittsburgh, PA (CMU is right there; how is it not kicking ass?) * Ann Arbor, MI (another Midwestern gem) * Chicago, IL (if you consider that low-COL) * Toronto, Ontario (ok, not a US city, but I spent a summer there and loved it) Almost none of these would be considered low-COL (they're above 100) and relative to their regions they're quite high, but they're a hell of a lot cheaper than New York or Palo Alto. Oh, one ass-kicking advantage of the low-COL places: people actually want to be lifelong software engineers. In New York, you can't raise a family on a (non-WS quant) engineer's salary. Of course, most of young idiots have this insane dream of having a manager's title and pay (plus real stock options!) which you can get by 27 if you play the politics, but being full-time programmers and just using their magic manager powers to assign themselves the best work. It turns out not to work that way. Poor them... I really think the fact that one can't raise a family out here on an engineer's salary is toxic to the culture. It creates the wrong kind of ambition.