32 ms·

Why I'm Moving My Business From San Francisco To St. Louis

180 points by j0ncc 13y ago

carsongross 13y ago
> If you’re trying to bootstrap, being based in San Francisco is awful. Especially if you have a family. I rented a four bedroom house in a great neighborhood in Sacramento that was a bike ride from Midtown for $2900/mo. We ended up buying a bigger house in the same neighborhood for even less per month. No commute, food is cheap, etc. The cost savings are enormous, and I'm sure it's more expensive than St. Louis... Yep: http://www.bestplaces.net/cost-of-living/sacramento-ca/st.-louis-mo/50000 http://www.bestplaces.net/cost-of-living/sacramento-ca/st.-l... The trick outside the Bay Area, if you are consult-strapping, is keeping the contracts coming in. Probably better in areas like St. Louis than in Sac.
- jlgaddis 13y ago
  I live in the Midwest. My monthly expenses are roughly half of your monthly rent. (And I have fiber coming into my house and can get 1 Gbps.)
  - carsongross 13y ago
    Yeah, man. I'd move in a heartbeat if it weren't for family in the area.
    - mjn 13y ago
      Having grown up in the midwest, one of the main things keeping me from moving back (besides particularities of jobs/etc.) is the weather. Really really cold winters, hot & humid summers. Nice springs and autumns, though, if I could arrange to be somewhere else Dec-Feb and June-Aug. I'd pay a premium to live somewhere with a longer "nice to be outdoors" season, though how much of a premium is a good question. I actually live in Scandinavia now, and the winters here are warm in comparison!
      - SomeCallMeTim 13y ago
        I live near Boulder, one of the "hot" cities to create a start-up. In December Inc. magazine named it the top city for start-ups in fact. [1] Winters are only occasionally cold (it hit the 60s twice in the last week, and typically we get "warm" stretches throughout the winter, with only a couple of weeks of hard cold) and summers are dry. And a friend of mine just bought a 3-bedroom house near here for ~$90k (about 30 minutes from downtown Boulder). My neighborhood (not in Boulder) goes for 3x that, and Boulder proper goes from twice that up to SF-level prices ($4.3M for a condo [2]), depending on the exact part of Boulder. There's a crazy steep price gradient. On the other hand you can buy a 2 bedroom mobile home for less than $30k and live IN Boulder, if you want to really operate on a shoestring. [3] Depends on how you want to spend your money. :) [1] http://www.inc.com/magazine/201312/boulder-colorado-fast-growing-business.html http://www.inc.com/magazine/201312/boulder-colorado-fast-gro... [2] http://is.gd/MPZl88 http://is.gd/MPZl88 -- the most expensive condo in Boulder as of today, according to Zillow. You can get into the $10's of millions for a house. But you can also pay less than a half million for a house. Like I said above, crazy price gradient. [3] http://boulder.craigslist.org/reo/4275249378.html http://boulder.craigslist.org/reo/4275249378.html
      - nextos 13y ago
        Oh, really? I'm living in Scandinavia and looking to move elsewhere. Midwest was one of my options, and I had never thought winters were so bad over there!
        doorhammer 13y ago
        Good idea of what it looks like in St Louis: http://weatherspark.com/averages/31697/St-Louis-Missouri-United-States http://weatherspark.com/averages/31697/St-Louis-Missouri-Uni... Humidity was always the killer for me. I remember flying from San Diego to St. Louis. It was 75 degrees and dry in San Diego, and 102 degrees with 94% humidity in St. Louis. I wanted to die, heh That said, I always liked the variety. It means that I have pretty strong, nostalgic feelings associated with the seasons changing.
        13y ago
- slm_HN 13y ago
  I know this isn't exactly the best metric, but the demand for programmers in St. Louis seems very low. When I look at Craigslist I see a couple Java jobs, a couple PHP jobs and even one godforsaken VB.net job. Even Jeff Atwood doesn't use VB.net. So I'm doubtful that it would be easier to keep the contracts coming in while in St. Louis.
  - excid3 13y ago
    Not quite. We've got about 5000 programming jobs or so available here. Of course they're not all with the latest technology, but things like http://launchcodestl.com http://launchcodestl.com are working to help fill these open positions.
  - bzalasky 13y ago
    Craigslist doesn't hold the same clout outside of the Bay Area in my experience. Almost never the best place to look for anything.
    - icantthinkofone 13y ago
      This is true. Craigslist posters are typically looking to get someone dirt cheap here. The real job listings for here are on Monster.
  - thecoffman 13y ago
    As a coder living in St. Louis, I can say that this hasn't been my experience at all. There is an exceptionally high demand for coders around here. Barely a week goes by without someone trying to poach good programmers. Its not necessarily all sexy startups, but there is an excellent market for programmers in general. We have a fairly good startup scene (though obviously nothing on SF) and a large number of more traditional corporate employers of programmers like Express Scripts, Monsanto, Wells Fargo, Scottrade, Ameren, Charter, Anheuser Busch, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman. There is also an exceptionally active biotechnology scene here.
    - doorhammer 13y ago
- NDizzle 13y ago
  I did the same thing but I skipped past Sac to Yuba City. 13% cheaper housing here according to the same site. I'm renting a 4/3 2500 sq ft house on an 8k sq ft lot 3 blocks away from an 8/10 greatschools.org K-8 (I have 3 kids.) for $1600/mo. I telecommute to my Bay Area job.
- joshAg 13y ago
  As someone who grew up in roseville, I am really, really glad for your kids' sake that you bought a house in midtown.
randallsquared 13y ago
I was in St. Louis for Strange Loop 2013, and I was pretty astonished at how nice (and uncrowded) the downtown was. I asked about it at http://www.reddit.com/r/StLouis/comments/1mlum2/whats_wrong_with_st_louis/ http://www.reddit.com/r/StLouis/comments/1mlum2/whats_wrong_... and got some interesting responses. The "what's wrong with..." was in the sense of "surely it can't be as great as it seems here?", by the way.
- hapless 13y ago
  Most midwestern cities have no pedestrian traffic downtown. That is perfectly normal across much of America. In a typical midwestern city, anyone who can afford it commutes to the central business district by car. They live, shop, and eat in the suburbs. They use their cars for all of these activities. The C.B.D. ends up deserted at night when the office workers leave. Any successful night-time businesses have parking, in order to attract suburban customers. There is little reason for anyone to be on foot. The reddit thread mentions very specific districts where you find pedestrians. I imagine those areas have excellent central parking, and deliberately-created "walkable" areas for browsing. A great development pattern to bring life back to deserted downtowns.
  - randallsquared 13y ago
    "In a typical midwestern city, anyone who can afford it commutes to the central business district by car." And, as I was walking about at rush hour, I expected to see a lot of car traffic, but the streets were practically empty of autos. The nearby freeway across the river was quite busy, however. I think the reddit thread had good things to say about the former decline of the city center.
  - dionidium 13y ago
    > The reddit thread mentions very specific districts where you find pedestrians. I was one of the people who mentioned some of those places in that thread. There are such places in St. Louis, but Strange Loop (which I also attended) is not held near any of them. Most of the stretch talked about in that thread, from 9th and Market up to Union Station, is kind of a pedestrian wasteland (for lots of reasons related to density, failed urban renewal projects, and so on). Nobody in St. Louis goes to Union Station anymore; it's a complete failure of a project. But, likewise, nobody here would use it as any sort of example in a conversation about foot traffic in the city.
aliston 13y ago
St. Louis is cheap, but it's cheap for a reason. If you think 6th and Market is bad, take a stroll through East St. Louis. It has the 3rd highest murder rate in the country. Violent crime is on the rise. [1] Basically, it's one of the most dangerous cities in the country. If that sort of thing doesn't bother you, then you'd probably be better off just moving your startup to Oakland and maintaining a connection to the Bay Area startup network. Or, if it does, move to a more modern, safer city in the South that still has a low cost of living without many of the economic problems of the rust belt cities (and better weather to boot!). [1] http://www.nbcnews.com/business/most-dangerous-cities-america-832351 http://www.nbcnews.com/business/most-dangerous-cities-americ...
- bzalasky 13y ago
  Have you lived in St. Louis? East St. Louis is not St. Louis. I lived in St. Louis for the better part of 27 years (Tower Grove South, St. Louis County, Central West End, and Boulevard Heights) and never had any problems. St. Louis is a city of neighborhoods, just like many other places. Some areas have higher crime than others, but to categorically call the whole town dangerous isn't fair.
- bpodgursky 13y ago
  East St Louis is not in St Louis. It's (1) in Illinois and (2) across the Mississippi river, and there is a 0% chance of accidentally wandering there.
- inspectahdeck 13y ago
  Having grown up in St. Louis, I will say that the statistics about violence are highly skewed. Yes, the rates of violent crime in East/North St. Louis are extremely high. However, it's not terribly difficult to avoid these areas (unless you're really into strip clubs). The suburbs and most of the rest of the city are no less safe than comparable areas in the bay area.
  - cgore 13y ago
    I grew up in the area too, and moved back a few years ago. People often give me weird looks when I say I live on the Illinois side, assuming I'm living next to Pop's or something. The Illinois side is all really nice farmland if you just go a few miles out from the city. That is one of the nice things about Saint Louis. I grew up on several acres of land, my dad was able to commute to downtown in less than 30 minutes, and he was able to afford that on a mid-level government employee salary.
jack-r-abbit 13y ago
Right now it is noon in St. Louis and 19 degrees. Right now it is 10:00 in SF and 53 degrees. I think weather plays a large part in why people like to live in the Bay Area. Many refer to the high cost of living here as the "sun tax." As I sit in my office wearing shorts and a t-shirt, I can't even fathom living in St. Louis.
- zinssmeister 13y ago
  "sun tax" is cheaper in Texas. It's zero as in 0% income tax.
  - rebelidealist 13y ago
    There is a hefty sun burn tax in Texas. 100 degree weather for sometimes 30 straight days. May - Sept are all 90 degrees+ without fail. The winter is colder than the bay area.
    - zinssmeister 13y ago
      I lived in both states and the weather in the Bay Area isn't enough to justify the heavy income tax, sales tax and cost of housing. It's great that it's in the 60s and 70s year round but with zero rain fall you got other cons making up for pros in that category. Sure Texas is hot and that is a downside but agreeing that the weather in the Bay Area is worth an insane amount of extra cash isn't correct.
      - _delirium 13y ago
        If you have large housing needs (family/etc.) I can see that, but as a single person renting I didn't find the pricing difference large enough to be worth choosing Texas just for the housing savings. Paid about $700/mo to rent a 1-bd in Houston, vs $1100 to rent a nicer 1-bd in Santa Cruz, near the beach. Sure, that's almost $5k savings over a year in Houston, but you're not going to retire on an extra $5k. Well more like $4k savings overall once you take into account the extra electric bill I had in Houston, running the A/C for 7-8 months of the year.
deleted 13y ago
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ChrisNorstrom 13y ago
If you're looking for "San Francisco" feel, crowd, look, shops, and trendy neighborhoods in St. Louis. Go to the "Central West End" District. If there's one thing St. Louis can be proud of it's that district. That whole area from Forest Park (bigger than Central Park in New York) including the neighborhoods around it, Barnes Jewish Hospital, Children's Hospital Complex, GasLamp District, Central West End is really nice.
- allard 13y ago
  small correction — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslight_Square%2C_St._Louis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslight_Square%2C_St._Louis
- doorhammer 13y ago
  I miss tower grove park, forest park, and the botanical gardens most about having left stl. Partly because I could see the botanical gardens from the balcony on the back of my apt, though
zinssmeister 13y ago
And so it begins. The Bay Area is starting to lose some of its talent to other areas (in an already tight talent market). This is just one example and I ran into a few others in the past 2 months, that are in a gtfo state. I have also tried to hire good people from other areas of the country that used to be interested in SF but are no longer seeing it as a nice place to actually live, because they too can do the math.
timr 13y ago
The current San Francisco influx is unsustainable. If you're somewhere else in the world and thinking about coming here to do a startup, I wish I could convince you to change your mind. San Francisco is incredibly expensive. Rents have shot up by ~50% since 2008, office space is following the same trend, and competition for (even mediocre) programmers is intense. Worse, a lot of the cultural diversity that made San Francisco interesting has been driven out by the high prices -- it's a much more homogenous city than a few years ago, where mom-and-pop shops and other neighborhood amenities have been replaced by places selling $10 "artisinal grilled cheese" sandwiches and "mixology" bars where you can buy your choice of $15 cocktail. SF feels increasingly like a city for wealthy yuppies, because...it is a city for wealthy yuppies. Living here on anything less than a good engineer's salary is becoming a tall order. Which brings us to a very important point for all the young programmer dudes: when you all crowd into the same tiny city and bid up the rents into the stratosphere, your available dating pool shrinks to a puddle (yet another consequence of the skewed gender balance in tech. sigh.) All the pour-over coffee in the world doesn't make you happy when you can't get a date, and those artisan cocktails are far less cute when you're jockeying for position at the bar in a crowded room full of guys. If you're a 20-something male programmer looking for a date in SF, I feel badly for you. Hope you like BART, because you're going to Oakland (if you're lucky!) Once upon a time it was only a mildly bad decision to locate your startup in San Francisco, but you could justify it with the appeal of a diverse, cosmopolitan city. Right now, there's a very real financial penalty (rents, salaries, taxes), and the cultural benefits are waning. There are a lot of great cities in the US, and on the internet, you can work from anywhere. Try those instead.
- blisterpeanuts 13y ago
  SF used to be known as good woman-hunting territory, because of the predominance of gay males. Has that changed because of the tech influx?
  - timr 13y ago
    That was always a little exaggerated IMO, but in the 20-something demographic, yes. SF feels like a giant frat party right now. At an all-boys school. If you're 30+ things are less bad just because of the basic demographic realities of single life. But my friends from NYC still laugh at the dating scene here.
nilsimsa 13y ago
Why do you have to live in San Francisco city itself. There are many places in the Bay Area more affordable than San Francisco.
- zobzu 13y ago
  they're pretty close to the price of SF. else, please mention one that is less than an hour of commute away.
  - mahyarm 13y ago
    You can get a 2bed for $1k in east bay richmond :p
  - swampthing 13y ago
    Pleasant Hill is cheap, I've heard.
clavalle 13y ago
I love St. Louis. Certain parts have a European feel that no other city outside of Canada has. There are a lot of extremely bright, hard working people there too. It is odd. It is a city that seems to not know how much untapped talent it has. That being said, there are parts that are rundown and sketchy. There are huge problems with drugs like methamphetamine outside of the 'normal' urban drug issues that most cities have. In addition, from what I understand, the Missouri tax system is terrible (property tax on many large items you own like cars in addition to your homestead tax and sales tax on top of income tax).
- doorhammer 13y ago
  There are definitely some bad parts of st. louis, but I have to say, the one main rule: stay out of east st. louis. It's pretty bad news. Luckily, if you're in the missouri section of saint louis, you'd have to stumble pretty badly to accidentally cross the Mississippi and end up there.
  - icantthinkofone 13y ago
    To be clear, East St. Louis is not part of St. Louis and isn't even in the same state.
    - doorhammer 13y ago
      Yeah. But how the city is technically setup doesn't stop people from being confused and stopping there. I'm not saying that east st. louis is terrible as an indictment of st. louis. I love stl. I can't wait to move back. I've just met a lot of random folks who don't realize that east st. louis is different, and stop by. Luckily, if you stay on the west side of the river, you're pretty much fine. I lived in the city near the botanical gardens for awhile and it was great. There are sketchy places in St. Louis itself, but they're not as bad as east st. louis, and that's like just about any other city I've been.
- ridicter 13y ago
  I went to Washington University in St. Louis, and I was overall impressed with the beauty of the city (especially forest park) and the sense of community. The kids at the school were wicked smart (ranked 7th in the nation in terms of average SAT scores--higher than Stanford). The city is super segregated. When you cross Delmar, the population shifts from very wealthy and white to poor and black.
howradical 13y ago
Former STL startup founder here (slicehost). We were from St Louis, so starting the business here made sense and gave us several distinct advantages (cheap power, data center space, etc). For startups, it's currently an ideal place IMO. There are quality people here doing whatever it takes to help people get a business started. Money? They can help. Space? They can help. Introductions? They can help. A low cost of living gives you plenty of time to figure things out. Throw in a ton of good restaurants, a decent art/music scene, a couple of good universities and you have something worth serious consideration. Biggest downsides are weather (winters are chilly) and you need a car.
mark_l_watson 13y ago
It is not only rent but other things like higher sales and income tax rates in California. My wife and I live in the mountains in Central Arizona and the cost of living is lower than California in many ways.
sabbatic13 13y ago
The problem with these places is what happens, when you need to hire people to build your company. The tech world is full of impressionistic statements like 'they have a startup scene,' but when you start getting numbers on available talent, you'll see you're putting yourself in a bad position. To take an example where I have better data, people have commented on the vibrant and growing startup scene in Santiago, Chile. Maybe it is vibrant and growing, but the total number of people professionally employed in software development (devs, testers, manager, product managers, etc.) is only about 2000. Split that 2000 into 50 different companies (and 50 tech companies would often be held up as proof of viability for the location), eliminate the high percentage with the wrong skill set for your company, and how likely is it, really, that you could build an engineering team of 20 and sustain that in the face of attrition over time? St. Louis isn't going to have more than a few thousand of the same sort of people. Most of them are also not products of local universities with strong engineering programs relevant to most of the kinds of software behind most tech startups these days. The supply therefore is not growing at a steady rate or being replenished. 75 startups in one location? What happens, when the half that make it past the founder stage need to hire 3-4 people? Not only are there only a few available devs of any skill level available for each, but they all have dozens of options on the same block. For startups, a higher percentage of engineers in an area employed by companies of 50-people or less actually makes hiring harder. In such a situation, they all have options of more or less equal value, and you have little to distinguish yourself from the others. The fact that SV has Google, Yahoo, Mcsft, etc. alongside a ton of mid-sized and smaller companies makes it easier. If you've ever tried to recruit for a startup, think about how often you bring up ownership, autonomy, "startup culture," etc. as selling points? How well does that work in an environment, when nearly everyone already has that where they are? This is just a quick set of reflections, but the overall point I hope is made. The truth is that staffing your startup is one of the most brutal forms of competition your business will experience. You're one of many, many players competing for an extremely scarce resource that very few founders even know how to identify, qualify, or retain, once they've got them. If you ever plan on building your company beyond a small team of friends and local referrals, you should be doing everything you can to stack the deck in your favor. The Bering Sea may be an expensive and crowded area for gold prospecting, but you're still more likely to find gold there than in Lake Michigan.
wj 13y ago
I moved to STL last year for family reasons. I had been struggling a bit to figure out things to do so the list in this post is much appreciated. Good luck with your startup!
california_roll 13y ago
Welcome to St Louis! There is a very active Meetup group for entrepreneurs here - StartLouis. Please check us out!
jskonhovd 13y ago
St. Louis is great. I wouldn't live there. It's very similar, at least in my experience, to my hometown of Memphis. The Italian food is obviously better, but we have barbecue. :) America has a lot of great cities. They all don't have the technical talent level that San Francisco has, but good culture is not monopolized in San Francisco.
- seanmcdirmid 13y ago
  > The Italian food is obviously better, but we have barbecue. St. Louis (and much of the midwest/south) also has a very high obesity rate compared to SF. I would visit Memphis as a kid living in Mississippi. I could at least say that Memphis was better than anywhere in Mississippi :)
geebee 13y ago
You're reminding me of a quote from Patti Smith: it's about New York, but it could easily be about SF as well... http://gothamist.com/2010/05/03/patti_smith_suggests_finding_anothe.php http://gothamist.com/2010/05/03/patti_smith_suggests_finding... "New York has closed itself off to the young and the struggling. But there are other cities. Detroit. Poughkeepsie. New York City has been taken away from you. So my advice is: Find a new city."
petercooper 13y ago
This is one of the things I'm jealous of America for coming from a British perspective: that is, a wide variety of cities being technologically advanced and good for startups, tech and businesses generally. Think Austin, think Raleigh-Durhan, think Philadelphia, think Seattle.. Everything in the UK is so grotesquely skewed towards London when it comes to modern tech. Some other cities aren't entirely horrible (Manchester, say) and some have a technically progressive air going for them (Brighton) but it sounds like even St Louis as a relatively small US city has more going for it in one place than most top tier British cities that aren't London (say Leeds, Nottingham, or Birmingham).
- joshAg 13y ago
  just to throw some figures at you about how big st. louis is or isn't: > As of the 2010 census, the population was 319,294, and a 2012 estimate put the population at 318,172,[6] making it the 58th-largest U.S. city in 2012. The metropolitan St. Louis area, known as Greater St. Louis (CSA), is the 19th-largest metropolitan area in the United States with a population of 2,900,605. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Louis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Louis
  - dionidium 13y ago
    And I'll be the annoying St. Louisan who feels compelled to put these numbers into some context for what feels like the billionth time. St. Louis City is entirely independent from the surrounding St. Louis County and covers an exceptionally small area by the standards of most big cities (~66 sq/mi). Some similar cities have addressed this by merging with their surrounding county (Indianapolis, for example, which is about 368 sq/mi), but even those that haven't (e.g. Kansas City) still cover a much larger portion of their region (316 sq/mi for KC). It's very easy to exit the city-proper in St. Louis and not feel at all as though you've left the core of the city. The inner-ring suburbs are quite urban and, while the distinction between them and the City itself is the source of much local posturing, it's a misleading delineation if you're trying to figure out just how big St. Louis really is. (As a side note, this way of dividing up the region also has a significant effect on the City's infamous crime statistics, for reasons that should be pretty obvious with a little bit of thought. That is to say, if you define almost any city as only its most inner core, then you're going to end up with much higher crime rates than if you include its suburbs. And if you're comparing one city that doesn't include its suburbs with cities that predominantly do, then, well, you get the idea.) In other words, the larger MSA/CSA numbers more accurately reflect the relative size of both St. Louis's urban core and the surrounding region.
gkoberger 13y ago
Economics aside, and on a more personal note: it's a shame to lose Jon. He's one of the kindest, most talented founders (and friends) I've met in SF, and it's a shame he's leaving.
brosco45 13y ago
SF is all about making money fast for yourself.
- zobzu 13y ago
  and sleeping in your car then. because if you rent, no luck.
beachstartup 13y ago
if i had a business based in SF and wanted to move, i would move to west LA. actually, i already did that, years ago. SF is a pain in the ass to live in, even if you have lots of money.
- anandvc 13y ago
  How do you like West LA so far?
  - beachstartup 13y ago
    i live in santa monica, which in my mind is like an improved san francisco, and an improved los angeles, combined. i can always see a tiny twinge of jealousy when i tell current-SFers that i live in SM now. :) it's not perfect but it's good for me. i have an amazing view from both home and the office, i can walk OR drive OR cab to get food/coffee/clothes/entertainment, and have access to the rest of LA if i choose to leave the sm/westside bubble.
- ulfw 13y ago
  100% agree! Santa Monica/West LA is so much better in terms of price/value, weather, quality of life, food, things to do. Just traffic sucks
dugmartin 13y ago
The last picture is of the City Musuem. If you are ever near St Louis with kids you have to go there. It is one of the coolest places I've ever been to. http://www.citymuseum.org/site/ http://www.citymuseum.org/site/
- ssully 13y ago
  The zoo is fantastic as well. Best penguin exhibit I've ever seen.
- colanderman 13y ago
  You don't need kids to have fun there.
  - dugmartin 13y ago
    I think I might have had more fun than my kids did. Climbing outside in rebar tubes 40 feet above the ground is a lot of fun. We didn't do the 7 story slide though - we walked up there but the line was not moving at all. We are going back this summer (I live in New England but go home to Southern Illinois every summer for a visit).
- happimess 13y ago
  Wear shoes and clothes you can move in. It really is one of the coolest indoor spaces I've ever seen.
GFK_of_xmaspast 13y ago
A lot of people say SF/SV/etc is terrible because it's full of Californians, but I've lived all over the country and known lots of people from lots of states and I'd rather live among Californians than Missourians or (god forbid) Texans.
- hippee-lee 13y ago
  I work with a Texan. Really nice guy and smarter then me but he never talks down to me. He phrases his suggestions as questions and the thicker he lays on the drawl the more likely it is that his opinion will turn out to be good advice.
  - sophacles 13y ago
    I know a guy like that. He's not a Texan, I don't think that part matters. He's a retired Chicago cop. I interact with him in the context of volunteer work for a few organizations locally. I have no idea how he does it, but he'll walk up, start chatting, have a question or two, maybe relate a musing he was having, and go on to talk to someone else. Every damn time I find myself doing his bidding and about an hour realizing that fact. I have no idea how he does it, other than he's a wizard. He never says "do this", or "i think you should ...". I've seen it work on many other people as well. One day I'll unlock that superpower.
- ulfw 13y ago
  A large number of IT folks in SF aren't from California or even America for that matter.
diziet 13y ago
This is all great, but if you're building a company focused on earning money by doing sales (especially one that has you interacting with other tech companies), the amount of clients you can meet face to face in St. Louis (and the size of the deals) is not something I'd suspect to be competitive with what you'd find in SF.
- smcnally 13y ago
  This is where the rubber hits the road. Staff talent -- especially creative, tech, sales, marketing -- can be identified and managed as a distributed workforce. Most clients need face time. Most prospects need face time before they are clients. It's anachronistic, but mostly the way of the world. I'd love to hear differently.
mathrawka 13y ago
I used to live in St. Louis and worked at a startup that was located in downtown (right on Washington Ave) 13 years ago. Back then downtown was dead after 5pm, as everyone left to go home back in the suburbs and not much of a night life in the city. Recently, I went back to visit for the first time in over 10 years. I was amazed that there was a night life, and families would go out to eat in the city! It seems to be turning it self around well, but I am sure there are more hurdles to make it even safer. In addition to it being easier to get funding [1], it sounds like St. Louis is really looking to be a good spot for a startup in the US. 1: http://archgrants.org/ http://archgrants.org/
auctiontheory 13y ago
St. Louis may have the best chess scene in the US, or perhaps second only to NYC. Among other things, it hosts the US Championships every year. And Magnus Carlsen has played there. And Anna Sharevich lives there. (I.e. a lot more than the "Hall of Fame.")
deleted 13y ago
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hussong 13y ago
I wonder what's going to happen to Need/Want's "Designed in San Francisco" claim. Would "Designed in Saint Louis" work just as well?
YouAreAllStupid 13y ago
Why I don't fucking care. Why I switched from one hyped thing to the next hyped thing, is considered harmful.
csense 13y ago
Why relocate instead of hiring remote workers?
bluesnowmonkey 13y ago
> 3.8x cheaper than San Francisco. Moving to St Louis is going to almost quadruple my company’s runway. It's inversely proportional to your personal rent? Your company has no revenue, no employees, no office, no servers, no contractors, no contracts, no other costs in general? Is that really a company? I don't think you're moving a business, I think you're just moving.
MetaCards 13y ago
Long-time lurker, just saw this post about my hometown so I created an account. I have a tech business in St. Louis. I love living in St. Louis and will never live anywhere else. A few comments: It is extremely hard to hire\find good programmers. I've posted job ads on Dice and Craigslist, and received 2 or 3 replies. I don't think I received ONE reply from Dice. The replies you get are people that can't answer the most basic questions. You will HAVE to use a recruiting firm that will try to poach the talent and you have to search out resumes. It will cost at least $50k for a programmer that can't even answer the most basic questions in an interview. Fortunately, I got very lucky and found one of the most kick-ass people on the planet. In regards to East. St Louis, as other people mentioned, it is NOT in Missouri, it's in ILLINOIS. The only reason people in St Louis go to East St Louis is because the bars stop serving at 1:30 or 2AM. If you want to drink past that, everyone goes to East St. Louis. Either that, or to go to strip clubs. Given that, if it's a Friday or Saturday night, you'll see a bunch of other St Louisians over in East St Louis at Pops, or the Oz, or at strip clubs. It is definitely a bad area though. I've been to East St Louis many times and have never felt threatened. The bad part of St Louis is North County. Unless you live there, the only reason to go there is for drugs. I've never been there, and as far as I know, you can't drink past 2AM there, and they don't have any strip clubs. I've driven by there many times, and I knew someone that worked in North County for years and never had any issues. It's like any other city, there are parts you don't want to venture through by yourself, late at night. Unfortunately, I think most of the crime in both E St Louis, and North county, is local, black on black crime. Downtown is somewhat desolate. If you want to live downtown, there are some cool areas like Soulard which is making a come back. Most people live in West County, South County, St Charles county, etc. I would never live downtown. Most of the action is outside of downtown. There are good sized office buildings in Clayton, West County, etc. In the county areas, there are cops all over the place(which is a good thing). I've lived in a lot of places, and the bottom line is it's one of the safest places I've lived. I read HN all the time, but don't know much about this start-up. Welcome to St. Louis though! As others mentioned, there are a lot of talented people here.

180 points by j0ncc 13y ago

> If you’re trying to bootstrap, being based in San Francisco is awful. Especially if you have a family. I rented a four bedroom house in a great neighborhood in Sacramento that was a bike ride from Midtown for $2900/mo. We ended up buying a bigger house in the same neighborhood for even less per month. No commute, food is cheap, etc. The cost savings are enormous, and I'm sure it's more expensive than St. Louis... Yep: http://www.bestplaces.net/cost-of-living/sacramento-ca/st.-louis-mo/50000 http://www.bestplaces.net/cost-of-living/sacramento-ca/st.-l... The trick outside the Bay Area, if you are consult-strapping, is keeping the contracts coming in. Probably better in areas like St. Louis than in Sac.

jlgaddis 13y ago
I live in the Midwest. My monthly expenses are roughly half of your monthly rent. (And I have fiber coming into my house and can get 1 Gbps.)
- carsongross 13y ago
  Yeah, man. I'd move in a heartbeat if it weren't for family in the area.
  - mjn 13y ago
    Having grown up in the midwest, one of the main things keeping me from moving back (besides particularities of jobs/etc.) is the weather. Really really cold winters, hot & humid summers. Nice springs and autumns, though, if I could arrange to be somewhere else Dec-Feb and June-Aug. I'd pay a premium to live somewhere with a longer "nice to be outdoors" season, though how much of a premium is a good question. I actually live in Scandinavia now, and the winters here are warm in comparison!
    - SomeCallMeTim 13y ago
      I live near Boulder, one of the "hot" cities to create a start-up. In December Inc. magazine named it the top city for start-ups in fact. [1] Winters are only occasionally cold (it hit the 60s twice in the last week, and typically we get "warm" stretches throughout the winter, with only a couple of weeks of hard cold) and summers are dry. And a friend of mine just bought a 3-bedroom house near here for ~$90k (about 30 minutes from downtown Boulder). My neighborhood (not in Boulder) goes for 3x that, and Boulder proper goes from twice that up to SF-level prices ($4.3M for a condo [2]), depending on the exact part of Boulder. There's a crazy steep price gradient. On the other hand you can buy a 2 bedroom mobile home for less than $30k and live IN Boulder, if you want to really operate on a shoestring. [3] Depends on how you want to spend your money. :) [1] http://www.inc.com/magazine/201312/boulder-colorado-fast-growing-business.html http://www.inc.com/magazine/201312/boulder-colorado-fast-gro... [2] http://is.gd/MPZl88 http://is.gd/MPZl88 -- the most expensive condo in Boulder as of today, according to Zillow. You can get into the $10's of millions for a house. But you can also pay less than a half million for a house. Like I said above, crazy price gradient. [3] http://boulder.craigslist.org/reo/4275249378.html http://boulder.craigslist.org/reo/4275249378.html
    - nextos 13y ago
      Oh, really? I'm living in Scandinavia and looking to move elsewhere. Midwest was one of my options, and I had never thought winters were so bad over there!
      - doorhammer 13y ago
        Good idea of what it looks like in St Louis: http://weatherspark.com/averages/31697/St-Louis-Missouri-United-States http://weatherspark.com/averages/31697/St-Louis-Missouri-Uni... Humidity was always the killer for me. I remember flying from San Diego to St. Louis. It was 75 degrees and dry in San Diego, and 102 degrees with 94% humidity in St. Louis. I wanted to die, heh That said, I always liked the variety. It means that I have pretty strong, nostalgic feelings associated with the seasons changing.
        13y ago
slm_HN 13y ago
I know this isn't exactly the best metric, but the demand for programmers in St. Louis seems very low. When I look at Craigslist I see a couple Java jobs, a couple PHP jobs and even one godforsaken VB.net job. Even Jeff Atwood doesn't use VB.net. So I'm doubtful that it would be easier to keep the contracts coming in while in St. Louis.
- excid3 13y ago
  Not quite. We've got about 5000 programming jobs or so available here. Of course they're not all with the latest technology, but things like http://launchcodestl.com http://launchcodestl.com are working to help fill these open positions.
- bzalasky 13y ago
  Craigslist doesn't hold the same clout outside of the Bay Area in my experience. Almost never the best place to look for anything.
  - icantthinkofone 13y ago
    This is true. Craigslist posters are typically looking to get someone dirt cheap here. The real job listings for here are on Monster.
- thecoffman 13y ago
  As a coder living in St. Louis, I can say that this hasn't been my experience at all. There is an exceptionally high demand for coders around here. Barely a week goes by without someone trying to poach good programmers. Its not necessarily all sexy startups, but there is an excellent market for programmers in general. We have a fairly good startup scene (though obviously nothing on SF) and a large number of more traditional corporate employers of programmers like Express Scripts, Monsanto, Wells Fargo, Scottrade, Ameren, Charter, Anheuser Busch, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman. There is also an exceptionally active biotechnology scene here.
  - doorhammer 13y ago
NDizzle 13y ago
I did the same thing but I skipped past Sac to Yuba City. 13% cheaper housing here according to the same site. I'm renting a 4/3 2500 sq ft house on an 8k sq ft lot 3 blocks away from an 8/10 greatschools.org K-8 (I have 3 kids.) for $1600/mo. I telecommute to my Bay Area job.
joshAg 13y ago
As someone who grew up in roseville, I am really, really glad for your kids' sake that you bought a house in midtown.

randallsquared 13y ago

I was in St. Louis for Strange Loop 2013, and I was pretty astonished at how nice (and uncrowded) the downtown was. I asked about it at http://www.reddit.com/r/StLouis/comments/1mlum2/whats_wrong_with_st_louis/ http://www.reddit.com/r/StLouis/comments/1mlum2/whats_wrong_... and got some interesting responses. The "what's wrong with..." was in the sense of "surely it can't be as great as it seems here?", by the way.

hapless 13y ago
Most midwestern cities have no pedestrian traffic downtown. That is perfectly normal across much of America. In a typical midwestern city, anyone who can afford it commutes to the central business district by car. They live, shop, and eat in the suburbs. They use their cars for all of these activities. The C.B.D. ends up deserted at night when the office workers leave. Any successful night-time businesses have parking, in order to attract suburban customers. There is little reason for anyone to be on foot. The reddit thread mentions very specific districts where you find pedestrians. I imagine those areas have excellent central parking, and deliberately-created "walkable" areas for browsing. A great development pattern to bring life back to deserted downtowns.
- randallsquared 13y ago
  "In a typical midwestern city, anyone who can afford it commutes to the central business district by car." And, as I was walking about at rush hour, I expected to see a lot of car traffic, but the streets were practically empty of autos. The nearby freeway across the river was quite busy, however. I think the reddit thread had good things to say about the former decline of the city center.
- dionidium 13y ago
  > The reddit thread mentions very specific districts where you find pedestrians. I was one of the people who mentioned some of those places in that thread. There are such places in St. Louis, but Strange Loop (which I also attended) is not held near any of them. Most of the stretch talked about in that thread, from 9th and Market up to Union Station, is kind of a pedestrian wasteland (for lots of reasons related to density, failed urban renewal projects, and so on). Nobody in St. Louis goes to Union Station anymore; it's a complete failure of a project. But, likewise, nobody here would use it as any sort of example in a conversation about foot traffic in the city.

aliston 13y ago

St. Louis is cheap, but it's cheap for a reason. If you think 6th and Market is bad, take a stroll through East St. Louis. It has the 3rd highest murder rate in the country. Violent crime is on the rise. [1] Basically, it's one of the most dangerous cities in the country. If that sort of thing doesn't bother you, then you'd probably be better off just moving your startup to Oakland and maintaining a connection to the Bay Area startup network. Or, if it does, move to a more modern, safer city in the South that still has a low cost of living without many of the economic problems of the rust belt cities (and better weather to boot!). [1] http://www.nbcnews.com/business/most-dangerous-cities-america-832351 http://www.nbcnews.com/business/most-dangerous-cities-americ...

bzalasky 13y ago
Have you lived in St. Louis? East St. Louis is not St. Louis. I lived in St. Louis for the better part of 27 years (Tower Grove South, St. Louis County, Central West End, and Boulevard Heights) and never had any problems. St. Louis is a city of neighborhoods, just like many other places. Some areas have higher crime than others, but to categorically call the whole town dangerous isn't fair.
bpodgursky 13y ago
East St Louis is not in St Louis. It's (1) in Illinois and (2) across the Mississippi river, and there is a 0% chance of accidentally wandering there.
inspectahdeck 13y ago
Having grown up in St. Louis, I will say that the statistics about violence are highly skewed. Yes, the rates of violent crime in East/North St. Louis are extremely high. However, it's not terribly difficult to avoid these areas (unless you're really into strip clubs). The suburbs and most of the rest of the city are no less safe than comparable areas in the bay area.
- cgore 13y ago
  I grew up in the area too, and moved back a few years ago. People often give me weird looks when I say I live on the Illinois side, assuming I'm living next to Pop's or something. The Illinois side is all really nice farmland if you just go a few miles out from the city. That is one of the nice things about Saint Louis. I grew up on several acres of land, my dad was able to commute to downtown in less than 30 minutes, and he was able to afford that on a mid-level government employee salary.

jack-r-abbit 13y ago

Right now it is noon in St. Louis and 19 degrees. Right now it is 10:00 in SF and 53 degrees. I think weather plays a large part in why people like to live in the Bay Area. Many refer to the high cost of living here as the "sun tax." As I sit in my office wearing shorts and a t-shirt, I can't even fathom living in St. Louis.

zinssmeister 13y ago
"sun tax" is cheaper in Texas. It's zero as in 0% income tax.
- rebelidealist 13y ago
  There is a hefty sun burn tax in Texas. 100 degree weather for sometimes 30 straight days. May - Sept are all 90 degrees+ without fail. The winter is colder than the bay area.
  - zinssmeister 13y ago
    I lived in both states and the weather in the Bay Area isn't enough to justify the heavy income tax, sales tax and cost of housing. It's great that it's in the 60s and 70s year round but with zero rain fall you got other cons making up for pros in that category. Sure Texas is hot and that is a downside but agreeing that the weather in the Bay Area is worth an insane amount of extra cash isn't correct.
    - _delirium 13y ago
      If you have large housing needs (family/etc.) I can see that, but as a single person renting I didn't find the pricing difference large enough to be worth choosing Texas just for the housing savings. Paid about $700/mo to rent a 1-bd in Houston, vs $1100 to rent a nicer 1-bd in Santa Cruz, near the beach. Sure, that's almost $5k savings over a year in Houston, but you're not going to retire on an extra $5k. Well more like $4k savings overall once you take into account the extra electric bill I had in Houston, running the A/C for 7-8 months of the year.

deleted 13y ago

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ChrisNorstrom 13y ago

If you're looking for "San Francisco" feel, crowd, look, shops, and trendy neighborhoods in St. Louis. Go to the "Central West End" District. If there's one thing St. Louis can be proud of it's that district. That whole area from Forest Park (bigger than Central Park in New York) including the neighborhoods around it, Barnes Jewish Hospital, Children's Hospital Complex, GasLamp District, Central West End is really nice.

allard 13y ago
small correction — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslight_Square%2C_St._Louis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslight_Square%2C_St._Louis
doorhammer 13y ago
I miss tower grove park, forest park, and the botanical gardens most about having left stl. Partly because I could see the botanical gardens from the balcony on the back of my apt, though

zinssmeister 13y ago

And so it begins. The Bay Area is starting to lose some of its talent to other areas (in an already tight talent market). This is just one example and I ran into a few others in the past 2 months, that are in a gtfo state. I have also tried to hire good people from other areas of the country that used to be interested in SF but are no longer seeing it as a nice place to actually live, because they too can do the math.

timr 13y ago

The current San Francisco influx is unsustainable. If you're somewhere else in the world and thinking about coming here to do a startup, I wish I could convince you to change your mind. San Francisco is incredibly expensive. Rents have shot up by ~50% since 2008, office space is following the same trend, and competition for (even mediocre) programmers is intense. Worse, a lot of the cultural diversity that made San Francisco interesting has been driven out by the high prices -- it's a much more homogenous city than a few years ago, where mom-and-pop shops and other neighborhood amenities have been replaced by places selling $10 "artisinal grilled cheese" sandwiches and "mixology" bars where you can buy your choice of $15 cocktail. SF feels increasingly like a city for wealthy yuppies, because...it is a city for wealthy yuppies. Living here on anything less than a good engineer's salary is becoming a tall order. Which brings us to a very important point for all the young programmer dudes: when you all crowd into the same tiny city and bid up the rents into the stratosphere, your available dating pool shrinks to a puddle (yet another consequence of the skewed gender balance in tech. sigh.) All the pour-over coffee in the world doesn't make you happy when you can't get a date, and those artisan cocktails are far less cute when you're jockeying for position at the bar in a crowded room full of guys. If you're a 20-something male programmer looking for a date in SF, I feel badly for you. Hope you like BART, because you're going to Oakland (if you're lucky!) Once upon a time it was only a mildly bad decision to locate your startup in San Francisco, but you could justify it with the appeal of a diverse, cosmopolitan city. Right now, there's a very real financial penalty (rents, salaries, taxes), and the cultural benefits are waning. There are a lot of great cities in the US, and on the internet, you can work from anywhere. Try those instead.

blisterpeanuts 13y ago
SF used to be known as good woman-hunting territory, because of the predominance of gay males. Has that changed because of the tech influx?
- timr 13y ago
  That was always a little exaggerated IMO, but in the 20-something demographic, yes. SF feels like a giant frat party right now. At an all-boys school. If you're 30+ things are less bad just because of the basic demographic realities of single life. But my friends from NYC still laugh at the dating scene here.

nilsimsa 13y ago

Why do you have to live in San Francisco city itself. There are many places in the Bay Area more affordable than San Francisco.

zobzu 13y ago
they're pretty close to the price of SF. else, please mention one that is less than an hour of commute away.
- mahyarm 13y ago
  You can get a 2bed for $1k in east bay richmond :p
- swampthing 13y ago
  Pleasant Hill is cheap, I've heard.

clavalle 13y ago

I love St. Louis. Certain parts have a European feel that no other city outside of Canada has. There are a lot of extremely bright, hard working people there too. It is odd. It is a city that seems to not know how much untapped talent it has. That being said, there are parts that are rundown and sketchy. There are huge problems with drugs like methamphetamine outside of the 'normal' urban drug issues that most cities have. In addition, from what I understand, the Missouri tax system is terrible (property tax on many large items you own like cars in addition to your homestead tax and sales tax on top of income tax).

doorhammer 13y ago
There are definitely some bad parts of st. louis, but I have to say, the one main rule: stay out of east st. louis. It's pretty bad news. Luckily, if you're in the missouri section of saint louis, you'd have to stumble pretty badly to accidentally cross the Mississippi and end up there.
- icantthinkofone 13y ago
  To be clear, East St. Louis is not part of St. Louis and isn't even in the same state.
  - doorhammer 13y ago
    Yeah. But how the city is technically setup doesn't stop people from being confused and stopping there. I'm not saying that east st. louis is terrible as an indictment of st. louis. I love stl. I can't wait to move back. I've just met a lot of random folks who don't realize that east st. louis is different, and stop by. Luckily, if you stay on the west side of the river, you're pretty much fine. I lived in the city near the botanical gardens for awhile and it was great. There are sketchy places in St. Louis itself, but they're not as bad as east st. louis, and that's like just about any other city I've been.
ridicter 13y ago
I went to Washington University in St. Louis, and I was overall impressed with the beauty of the city (especially forest park) and the sense of community. The kids at the school were wicked smart (ranked 7th in the nation in terms of average SAT scores--higher than Stanford). The city is super segregated. When you cross Delmar, the population shifts from very wealthy and white to poor and black.

howradical 13y ago

Former STL startup founder here (slicehost). We were from St Louis, so starting the business here made sense and gave us several distinct advantages (cheap power, data center space, etc). For startups, it's currently an ideal place IMO. There are quality people here doing whatever it takes to help people get a business started. Money? They can help. Space? They can help. Introductions? They can help. A low cost of living gives you plenty of time to figure things out. Throw in a ton of good restaurants, a decent art/music scene, a couple of good universities and you have something worth serious consideration. Biggest downsides are weather (winters are chilly) and you need a car.

mark_l_watson 13y ago

It is not only rent but other things like higher sales and income tax rates in California. My wife and I live in the mountains in Central Arizona and the cost of living is lower than California in many ways.

sabbatic13 13y ago

The problem with these places is what happens, when you need to hire people to build your company. The tech world is full of impressionistic statements like 'they have a startup scene,' but when you start getting numbers on available talent, you'll see you're putting yourself in a bad position. To take an example where I have better data, people have commented on the vibrant and growing startup scene in Santiago, Chile. Maybe it is vibrant and growing, but the total number of people professionally employed in software development (devs, testers, manager, product managers, etc.) is only about 2000. Split that 2000 into 50 different companies (and 50 tech companies would often be held up as proof of viability for the location), eliminate the high percentage with the wrong skill set for your company, and how likely is it, really, that you could build an engineering team of 20 and sustain that in the face of attrition over time? St. Louis isn't going to have more than a few thousand of the same sort of people. Most of them are also not products of local universities with strong engineering programs relevant to most of the kinds of software behind most tech startups these days. The supply therefore is not growing at a steady rate or being replenished. 75 startups in one location? What happens, when the half that make it past the founder stage need to hire 3-4 people? Not only are there only a few available devs of any skill level available for each, but they all have dozens of options on the same block. For startups, a higher percentage of engineers in an area employed by companies of 50-people or less actually makes hiring harder. In such a situation, they all have options of more or less equal value, and you have little to distinguish yourself from the others. The fact that SV has Google, Yahoo, Mcsft, etc. alongside a ton of mid-sized and smaller companies makes it easier. If you've ever tried to recruit for a startup, think about how often you bring up ownership, autonomy, "startup culture," etc. as selling points? How well does that work in an environment, when nearly everyone already has that where they are? This is just a quick set of reflections, but the overall point I hope is made. The truth is that staffing your startup is one of the most brutal forms of competition your business will experience. You're one of many, many players competing for an extremely scarce resource that very few founders even know how to identify, qualify, or retain, once they've got them. If you ever plan on building your company beyond a small team of friends and local referrals, you should be doing everything you can to stack the deck in your favor. The Bering Sea may be an expensive and crowded area for gold prospecting, but you're still more likely to find gold there than in Lake Michigan.

wj 13y ago

I moved to STL last year for family reasons. I had been struggling a bit to figure out things to do so the list in this post is much appreciated. Good luck with your startup!

california_roll 13y ago

Welcome to St Louis! There is a very active Meetup group for entrepreneurs here - StartLouis. Please check us out!

jskonhovd 13y ago

St. Louis is great. I wouldn't live there. It's very similar, at least in my experience, to my hometown of Memphis. The Italian food is obviously better, but we have barbecue. :) America has a lot of great cities. They all don't have the technical talent level that San Francisco has, but good culture is not monopolized in San Francisco.

seanmcdirmid 13y ago
> The Italian food is obviously better, but we have barbecue. St. Louis (and much of the midwest/south) also has a very high obesity rate compared to SF. I would visit Memphis as a kid living in Mississippi. I could at least say that Memphis was better than anywhere in Mississippi :)

geebee 13y ago

You're reminding me of a quote from Patti Smith: it's about New York, but it could easily be about SF as well... http://gothamist.com/2010/05/03/patti_smith_suggests_finding_anothe.php http://gothamist.com/2010/05/03/patti_smith_suggests_finding... "New York has closed itself off to the young and the struggling. But there are other cities. Detroit. Poughkeepsie. New York City has been taken away from you. So my advice is: Find a new city."

petercooper 13y ago

This is one of the things I'm jealous of America for coming from a British perspective: that is, a wide variety of cities being technologically advanced and good for startups, tech and businesses generally. Think Austin, think Raleigh-Durhan, think Philadelphia, think Seattle.. Everything in the UK is so grotesquely skewed towards London when it comes to modern tech. Some other cities aren't entirely horrible (Manchester, say) and some have a technically progressive air going for them (Brighton) but it sounds like even St Louis as a relatively small US city has more going for it in one place than most top tier British cities that aren't London (say Leeds, Nottingham, or Birmingham).

joshAg 13y ago
just to throw some figures at you about how big st. louis is or isn't: > As of the 2010 census, the population was 319,294, and a 2012 estimate put the population at 318,172,[6] making it the 58th-largest U.S. city in 2012. The metropolitan St. Louis area, known as Greater St. Louis (CSA), is the 19th-largest metropolitan area in the United States with a population of 2,900,605. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Louis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Louis
- dionidium 13y ago
  And I'll be the annoying St. Louisan who feels compelled to put these numbers into some context for what feels like the billionth time. St. Louis City is entirely independent from the surrounding St. Louis County and covers an exceptionally small area by the standards of most big cities (~66 sq/mi). Some similar cities have addressed this by merging with their surrounding county (Indianapolis, for example, which is about 368 sq/mi), but even those that haven't (e.g. Kansas City) still cover a much larger portion of their region (316 sq/mi for KC). It's very easy to exit the city-proper in St. Louis and not feel at all as though you've left the core of the city. The inner-ring suburbs are quite urban and, while the distinction between them and the City itself is the source of much local posturing, it's a misleading delineation if you're trying to figure out just how big St. Louis really is. (As a side note, this way of dividing up the region also has a significant effect on the City's infamous crime statistics, for reasons that should be pretty obvious with a little bit of thought. That is to say, if you define almost any city as only its most inner core, then you're going to end up with much higher crime rates than if you include its suburbs. And if you're comparing one city that doesn't include its suburbs with cities that predominantly do, then, well, you get the idea.) In other words, the larger MSA/CSA numbers more accurately reflect the relative size of both St. Louis's urban core and the surrounding region.

gkoberger 13y ago

Economics aside, and on a more personal note: it's a shame to lose Jon. He's one of the kindest, most talented founders (and friends) I've met in SF, and it's a shame he's leaving.

brosco45 13y ago

SF is all about making money fast for yourself.

zobzu 13y ago
and sleeping in your car then. because if you rent, no luck.

beachstartup 13y ago

if i had a business based in SF and wanted to move, i would move to west LA. actually, i already did that, years ago. SF is a pain in the ass to live in, even if you have lots of money.

anandvc 13y ago
How do you like West LA so far?
- beachstartup 13y ago
  i live in santa monica, which in my mind is like an improved san francisco, and an improved los angeles, combined. i can always see a tiny twinge of jealousy when i tell current-SFers that i live in SM now. :) it's not perfect but it's good for me. i have an amazing view from both home and the office, i can walk OR drive OR cab to get food/coffee/clothes/entertainment, and have access to the rest of LA if i choose to leave the sm/westside bubble.
ulfw 13y ago
100% agree! Santa Monica/West LA is so much better in terms of price/value, weather, quality of life, food, things to do. Just traffic sucks

dugmartin 13y ago

The last picture is of the City Musuem. If you are ever near St Louis with kids you have to go there. It is one of the coolest places I've ever been to. http://www.citymuseum.org/site/ http://www.citymuseum.org/site/

ssully 13y ago
The zoo is fantastic as well. Best penguin exhibit I've ever seen.
colanderman 13y ago
You don't need kids to have fun there.
- dugmartin 13y ago
  I think I might have had more fun than my kids did. Climbing outside in rebar tubes 40 feet above the ground is a lot of fun. We didn't do the 7 story slide though - we walked up there but the line was not moving at all. We are going back this summer (I live in New England but go home to Southern Illinois every summer for a visit).
happimess 13y ago
Wear shoes and clothes you can move in. It really is one of the coolest indoor spaces I've ever seen.

GFK_of_xmaspast 13y ago

A lot of people say SF/SV/etc is terrible because it's full of Californians, but I've lived all over the country and known lots of people from lots of states and I'd rather live among Californians than Missourians or (god forbid) Texans.

hippee-lee 13y ago
I work with a Texan. Really nice guy and smarter then me but he never talks down to me. He phrases his suggestions as questions and the thicker he lays on the drawl the more likely it is that his opinion will turn out to be good advice.
- sophacles 13y ago
  I know a guy like that. He's not a Texan, I don't think that part matters. He's a retired Chicago cop. I interact with him in the context of volunteer work for a few organizations locally. I have no idea how he does it, but he'll walk up, start chatting, have a question or two, maybe relate a musing he was having, and go on to talk to someone else. Every damn time I find myself doing his bidding and about an hour realizing that fact. I have no idea how he does it, other than he's a wizard. He never says "do this", or "i think you should ...". I've seen it work on many other people as well. One day I'll unlock that superpower.
ulfw 13y ago
A large number of IT folks in SF aren't from California or even America for that matter.

diziet 13y ago

This is all great, but if you're building a company focused on earning money by doing sales (especially one that has you interacting with other tech companies), the amount of clients you can meet face to face in St. Louis (and the size of the deals) is not something I'd suspect to be competitive with what you'd find in SF.

smcnally 13y ago
This is where the rubber hits the road. Staff talent -- especially creative, tech, sales, marketing -- can be identified and managed as a distributed workforce. Most clients need face time. Most prospects need face time before they are clients. It's anachronistic, but mostly the way of the world. I'd love to hear differently.

mathrawka 13y ago

I used to live in St. Louis and worked at a startup that was located in downtown (right on Washington Ave) 13 years ago. Back then downtown was dead after 5pm, as everyone left to go home back in the suburbs and not much of a night life in the city. Recently, I went back to visit for the first time in over 10 years. I was amazed that there was a night life, and families would go out to eat in the city! It seems to be turning it self around well, but I am sure there are more hurdles to make it even safer. In addition to it being easier to get funding [1], it sounds like St. Louis is really looking to be a good spot for a startup in the US. 1: http://archgrants.org/ http://archgrants.org/

auctiontheory 13y ago

St. Louis may have the best chess scene in the US, or perhaps second only to NYC. Among other things, it hosts the US Championships every year. And Magnus Carlsen has played there. And Anna Sharevich lives there. (I.e. a lot more than the "Hall of Fame.")

deleted 13y ago

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hussong 13y ago

I wonder what's going to happen to Need/Want's "Designed in San Francisco" claim. Would "Designed in Saint Louis" work just as well?

YouAreAllStupid 13y ago

Why I don't fucking care. Why I switched from one hyped thing to the next hyped thing, is considered harmful.

csense 13y ago

Why relocate instead of hiring remote workers?

bluesnowmonkey 13y ago

> 3.8x cheaper than San Francisco. Moving to St Louis is going to almost quadruple my company’s runway. It's inversely proportional to your personal rent? Your company has no revenue, no employees, no office, no servers, no contractors, no contracts, no other costs in general? Is that really a company? I don't think you're moving a business, I think you're just moving.

MetaCards 13y ago

Long-time lurker, just saw this post about my hometown so I created an account. I have a tech business in St. Louis. I love living in St. Louis and will never live anywhere else. A few comments: It is extremely hard to hire\find good programmers. I've posted job ads on Dice and Craigslist, and received 2 or 3 replies. I don't think I received ONE reply from Dice. The replies you get are people that can't answer the most basic questions. You will HAVE to use a recruiting firm that will try to poach the talent and you have to search out resumes. It will cost at least $50k for a programmer that can't even answer the most basic questions in an interview. Fortunately, I got very lucky and found one of the most kick-ass people on the planet. In regards to East. St Louis, as other people mentioned, it is NOT in Missouri, it's in ILLINOIS. The only reason people in St Louis go to East St Louis is because the bars stop serving at 1:30 or 2AM. If you want to drink past that, everyone goes to East St. Louis. Either that, or to go to strip clubs. Given that, if it's a Friday or Saturday night, you'll see a bunch of other St Louisians over in East St Louis at Pops, or the Oz, or at strip clubs. It is definitely a bad area though. I've been to East St Louis many times and have never felt threatened. The bad part of St Louis is North County. Unless you live there, the only reason to go there is for drugs. I've never been there, and as far as I know, you can't drink past 2AM there, and they don't have any strip clubs. I've driven by there many times, and I knew someone that worked in North County for years and never had any issues. It's like any other city, there are parts you don't want to venture through by yourself, late at night. Unfortunately, I think most of the crime in both E St Louis, and North county, is local, black on black crime. Downtown is somewhat desolate. If you want to live downtown, there are some cool areas like Soulard which is making a come back. Most people live in West County, South County, St Charles county, etc. I would never live downtown. Most of the action is outside of downtown. There are good sized office buildings in Clayton, West County, etc. In the county areas, there are cops all over the place(which is a good thing). I've lived in a lot of places, and the bottom line is it's one of the safest places I've lived. I read HN all the time, but don't know much about this start-up. Welcome to St. Louis though! As others mentioned, there are a lot of talented people here.