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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

#81

Post by tomt2323 »

danielcampos93 wrote: post #29
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…

V An extremely optimistic culture Except on HN where people tend to skew quite negative. Lol

I assume a lot of us negative types are not Bay Area (or even CA) based.

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

#82

Post by ssimoni »

You should be close to your customers. My cofounders and I coded most of the MVP in the bay because we all happened to be living there, but then we started going to tradeshows and saw that most of our customers were in NYC so we moved east.

If you are doing a startup where you are a B2B tech company that sells to other tech companies, the bay area is great.

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

#83

Post by hellllllllooo »

stcredzero wrote: post #72
nrb wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This viewpoint doesn't appear to jive with the one being portrayed currently[1], that the exodus is only among the poor/middle-class and that the immigration of the rich and high-earners is actually accelerating. 1: https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-sac-skelton-income-t...

the exodus is only among the poor/middle-class and that the immigration of the rich and high-earners is actually accelerating. Is that supposed to make the groupthink better or worse? I suspect worse, as it's reducing the viewpoint diversity, as viewpoint is affected by socioeconomic status and livelihood.

I think the point is that tax isn't driving an exodus of businesses/entrepreneurs as OP suggested. The opposite is true and it's driving out lower income people. Oakland, for example, is growing like SF with 10+ tall buildings going up this year downtown to accommodate tech companies and their employees.

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

#84

Post by opportune »

l9k wrote: post #76
opportune wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 startu…

How did you get information about Tallinn specifically and what other cities did you consider in the same category?

I was reading about the best places to be an expat on something like nomadcapitalist.com and Estonia kept coming up due to the ease of immigrating + starting a business there. And I've just done personal research from there. For example https://ccdcoe.org/ is also based there which is a huge draw for software talent.

Other cities I've been considering - Lisbon, Riga, , Bucharest, Berlin, Prague, Dublin. Mostly was just looking for cheap places with developers that are in the EU and not too hard to immigrate to. Prague in particular seems like a pretty big nexus for EU developers and it's pretty inexpensive. There's undoubtedly many other cities that fit well in this category, I just haven't heard of them. But Tallinn punches above its weight in terms of software presence and it's basically the easiest to immigrate to so I focused on that pretty early on in terms of good places to found an EU-based company.

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

#85

Post by nkkollaw »

q3k wrote: post #24
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…

Political climate, for one thing. (recent anti-LGBT sentiment, anti-refugee/migrant sentiment, anti-EU sentiment and general right/nationalist movement uptick)

> Political climate, for one thing. (recent anti-LGBT sentiment, anti-refugee/migrant sentiment, anti-EU sentiment and general right/nationalist movement uptick)

Did you post this to start a flamewar, because you love campaigning against your own country, or just to spread misinformation?

This comment should be flagged.

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

#86

Post by nkkollaw »

badpun wrote: post #80
q3k wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Political climate, for one thing. (recent anti-LGBT sentiment, anti-refugee/migrant sentiment, anti-EU sentiment and general right/nationalist movement uptick)

Racism is arguably strong in the US and yet founders are not leaving... I don’t think political climate is on average a strong factor in their decision making.

Ehm... There is no more racism in Poland than in any other country.

OP is Pole (from his profile), and some Poles who left the country are bitter about their own country and campaign against it.

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

#87

Post by badpun »

d136o wrote: post #52
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…

What are the long term prospects for freedom of expression there? [1] As a first generation immigrant I just don't think the opportunities for socio-economic mobility would be present for my (future) kids anywhere but in a liberal democracy. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/10/poland-...

Most statements in this piece are highly debatable or blown out of proportions. Poland gets a lot of bad press under the new government (which sucks IMO, but on the grounds of their mundane incompetence and stupidity - high even for modern democracies - and not because they’re some evil authoritarians) in part because Polish media is mostly controlled by anti-government journalists, who put very heavy spin on reality. And these are the people who the foreign journalists (Spiegel, NYT, Guardian etc) talk to about situation in Poland. IMO, we’re ruled by cynical simpletons, but probably no greater than Trump, Berlusconi, Cameron etc.

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

#88

Post by jedberg »

johannes1234321 wrote: post #74
jedberg wrote: post #64

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.

Depending on the amount of communication needed for being efficient. I work 10+ years in a Rendite First organisation and there are regular times where I think "damn, discussing this over the water cooler, while running into each other, would be more efficient" than a chat exchange or setting up a video/phone conf. Of course on the plus side I have the uninterrupted working hours, where nobody walks in to me and flex…

I actually saw an interesting solution to this. I don't remember what company it was, but they had a designated "water cooler time" where they had a video chat up every day that anyone could pop into and talk about whatever they want, business or not. It gave people a chance to have those serendipitous conversations and built team morale.

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

#89

Post by opportune »

badpun wrote: post #78
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 worry about talent pool being too small (Estonia has a population of only over a million people). It might not be easy to get people from outside to relocate there, as no one else in EU (expect apparently some Finnish people) speaks Estonian, the weather is grim and wages aren’t that enticing. That’s probably why the government is trying very hard to attract foreign startup investors, as otherwise Tallin is at a…

Yes but Estonia has https://ccdcoe.org/ as well as numerous IT companies and startups already (most famously, Skype, now a Microsoft office). Plus I don't think you would have any issues having an English-speaking software development office.

Honestly Poland's far-right is a big turn off for me and if I were an ethnically Indian/Pakistani/Turkish software engineer I wouldn't want to live there. It also just doesn't seem like as nice of a place to live. Admittedly, I haven't done much research in terms of what I would need to do as a non-EU resident to get temporary residence there though. I would love for my notions to be proven wrong.

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

#90

Post by echevil »

johannes1234321 wrote: post #74
jedberg wrote: post #64

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.

Depending on the amount of communication needed for being efficient. I work 10+ years in a Rendite First organisation and there are regular times where I think "damn, discussing this over the water cooler, while running into each other, would be more efficient" than a chat exchange or setting up a video/phone conf. Of course on the plus side I have the uninterrupted working hours, where nobody walks in to me and flex…

Maybe we need Houseparty for work?
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