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Why entrepreneurs are leaving the Bay Area for their next startup

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Re: Why entrepreneurs are leaving the Bay Area for their next startup

#61

Post by dkfmn »

opportune wrote: post #59

I'm heavily considering Tallinn for a tech startup - It's easy to get residence status (IIRC basically requires a ~$60k investment in a business you are starting) and extremely easy to start a business. You get access to the EU labor/trade markets in a low COL city which already has a decent sized tech and entrepreneurship presence. The government is actively courting you and in general seems very easy to interact wi…

I'd suggest asking what is uniquely beneficial about Tallinn that will make your business more likely to succeed. Lots of places are cheap and the two exceptions you identify, talent and capital, are absolutely critical to the success of high-growth tech companies.

Re: Why entrepreneurs are leaving the Bay Area for their next startup

#62

Post by justfor1comment »

As an engineer in the Bay Area I would recommend most startups to locate themselves outside the bay. Especially if they operate a low margins business. Rent is expensive and so are the employee salaries over here. I have many Bay Area startup recruiters reach out to me with rather interesting projects. However, a quick look at Glassdoor reveals that the liquid portion of the salaries they offer is so low that I would need to live in a trailer to work there.

Re: Why entrepreneurs are leaving the Bay Area for their next startup

#63

Post by opportune »

dkfmn wrote: post #61
opportune wrote: post #59

I'm heavily considering Tallinn for a tech startup - It's easy to get residence status (IIRC basically requires a ~$60k investment in a business you are starting) and extremely easy to start a business. You get access to the EU labor/trade markets in a low COL city which already has a decent sized tech and entrepreneurship presence. The government is actively courting you and in general seems very easy to interact wi…

I'd suggest asking what is uniquely beneficial about Tallinn that will make your business more likely to succeed. Lots of places are cheap and the two exceptions you identify, talent and capital, are absolutely critical to the success of high-growth tech companies.

Very good point. I am actually visiting Tallinn later this year to try to meet with people in the entrepeneurship scene and learn more about the city.

While you're right that talent and capital are important, it's also true that no place on the planet has more capital and software talent than SV. So you're never going to beat SV measuring only those metrics. The challenge of an entrepeneur who wants to found a startup outside of the Bay area is to pick a location that is beneficial in other ways while not sacrificing too much in terms of capital and talent. I'm not too sure about the local capital in Tallinn (not that you necessarily need to raise money locally) but I do know it has a pretty strong developer community by european standards, maybe in the top 5 in europe. And it also excels in terms of government support for entrepreneurship and, afaik, local cybersecurity talent. So it's not just a cheap place, it's a cheap place that also has basically every other thing that makes founding a software business attractive with the possible exception of capital.

Re: Why entrepreneurs are leaving the Bay Area for their next startup

#64

Post by jedberg »

The solution to this is remote work. The main benefits of being in the valley are access to investors/capital. This advantage mostly only applies to executives. So have your executives in SV and have everyone else be wherever they want to be that is cheaper and nicer for them.

Re: Why entrepreneurs are leaving the Bay Area for their next startup

#65

Post by toephu2 »

navigatesol wrote: post #13
Toine wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Networking.

> Networking Yeah, in SV you can hook up with all the USC and Stanford kids who bribed their way into college!

That's only a very small percentage of the population that actually graduated from those schools.

Re: Why entrepreneurs are leaving the Bay Area for their next startup

#66

Post by i_phish_cats »

justfor1comment wrote: post #62

As an engineer in the Bay Area I would recommend most startups to locate themselves outside the bay. Especially if they operate a low margins business. Rent is expensive and so are the employee salaries over here. I have many Bay Area startup recruiters reach out to me with rather interesting projects. However, a quick look at Glassdoor reveals that the liquid portion of the salaries they offer is so low that I would…

If only there were trailer parks or other cheaper housing options around here. Fuck NIMBY's.

Re: Why entrepreneurs are leaving the Bay Area for their next startup

#67

Post by mattmanser »

potatofarmer45 wrote: post #19

SV isn't the best fit for a lot of startups. It really shouldn't be the default location for all startups especially since there are different options that offer different things (NYC, Denver/Boulder, Austin etc). The Bay Area has 3 things that set it apart from anywhere else and startups that really need this have no other real choice: Investors who are willing to invest super early Lots of top tier engineers An ext…

It's not a seed round if you're making $600,000 a year.

You could stop all development, fire every expensive person apart from some basic cheap support staff, and be wildly rich in a couple of years just from that.

Re: Why entrepreneurs are leaving the Bay Area for their next startup

#68

Post by driverdan »

donretag wrote: post #12
nkkollaw wrote: post #2

I wonder why entrepreneurs don't come to Poland to build their product. Warsaw or Wroclaw in particular are vibrant, tech-oriented cities where life is about 1/4 of SF. If I had to bet my future on being able to building something with 1M, I would want to get 4 months instead of 1 for the money. Of course, SF might have better investing ecosystem, but once you got the money development should be done in a more approp…

Venture capitalists need to be close to the CEO, who in turns needs to be close to the initial team. The Bay Area is popular because that is where the VCs are.

They don't need to, they want to. There's really no need for it.

Re: Why entrepreneurs are leaving the Bay Area for their next startup

#69

Post by stcredzero »

i_phish_cats wrote: post #66
justfor1comment wrote: post #62

As an engineer in the Bay Area I would recommend most startups to locate themselves outside the bay. Especially if they operate a low margins business. Rent is expensive and so are the employee salaries over here. I have many Bay Area startup recruiters reach out to me with rather interesting projects. However, a quick look at Glassdoor reveals that the liquid portion of the salaries they offer is so low that I would…

If only there were trailer parks or other cheaper housing options around here. Fuck NIMBY's.

If only there were trailer parks or other cheaper housing options around here.

There's one in Milpitas.

Re: Why entrepreneurs are leaving the Bay Area for their next startup

#70

Post by alain94040 »

pascalxus wrote: post #23
butstillbad99 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to assume SF salaries will be offered in places that are also super cheap? Do you expect founders and investors to ignore the cost of living reality in Nowheresville just cause?

Sure, if you're young and single and saving aggressively, you can still come out ahead in SF. But Even at half or 1/3 the salary, you'd still come out ahead in many areas across the country, if you have a family of 4. In SF, it's not just the extreme housing costs, but also the 3K-4K/month day care costs (if you can get it), and all the other COL.

My numbers disagree: https://thestartupconference.com/2018/09/21/about-that-silic...
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