If networking is the main benefit, why not live really far out and drive in for events? I have no idea what "far out" would mean, but I'm supposing you don't have to be networking every single day?
How to Survive in SF as a Broke Startup
21–30 of 120 posts
Re: How to Survive in SF as a Broke Startup
#22Why not just move somewhere else? To me, the best part of an internet company is that you can work from anywhere. Also, the money you make is usually made online, meaning it doesn't scale to your cost of living. If you make $1000/mo in ad revenue from your website, it doesn't matter if you live in SF or Portland. It's not like a wage, which changes drastically on your location. Why not move to an awesome, affordable…
Agreed. Whether it's Portland, or even somewhere like Myrtle Beach, SC - I'm working remotely for a Boston company, and my money goes so much further.
We're building a startup community at Startup.SC trying to do just what you're proposing: leverage the Internet to make higher income in a lower cost of living location. Agree also on flights into cities: we just had a demo-day pitch last night, and now I'm headed to Boston for TechStars Demo Day, Angel Bootcamp, etc. To make connections with our entrepreneurs.
Re: How to Survive in SF as a Broke Startup
#23Interesting. To live here in South Africa on those numbers you'd have to make similar sacrifices, in an economy which I normally regard as 10x cheaper than (what I've heard of) SF. Some questions: 1. When I hear people on this site talking about "low" startup engineer wages in SF, the numbers I see are 60k - 80k / year. But this article makes that number look like glorious riches by comparison. Living in the dining r…
Maybe I'm misunderstanding how this site works (had this account for years but only commented a few times). It looks like my comment was downvoted, can someone explain why? Is thinking about stereotypes offensive? Or it was deemed irrelevant?
Re: How to Survive in SF as a Broke Startup
#24Tradeoff: Living with your cofounders in the dining room of your office might possibly, you know, increase stress and strain among the group. Also that's a lot of time spent making meals. I doubt he's including researching recipes, shopping & cleaning up for 3 meals a day in his 1 hr/day estimate.
If you're living with your cofounders one person can cook for everyone.
Also note with this particular arrangement the commuting time is significantly reduced.
If living together is sufficient to create enough stress that the group can no longer function, you were never going to make it anyway.
Re: How to Survive in SF as a Broke Startup
#25Does anyone have an update on the utility of building a startup in SF? Except maybe for the (certainly large) class of "interacting with real world" or "local" startups (like Uber or Grubhub) I feel like you could gain so much more by even being outside of LA or something instead.
It's a huge disadvantage unless you're doing something that depends on access to a large number of high-quality (but expensive) engineers and/or rich people. Building a tool for programmers? The valley might be your place. Building a fashion startup? Go where people are fashionable. Building a search engine? There are a lot of search people here. Building a service startup that requires warehouses, inventory and/or l…
> access to a large number of ... rich people
That's kind of the heart of it for a lot of people. Say you're a young engineer with a great idea. Now what? You don't have the experience or connections to build your company, so you absolutely need to raise money. That kind of money may exist elsewhere, but only as a fraction of the SF money. "Silicon Alley" talks a big game, but their numbers aren't even close (especially when you talk about exits).
I personally strongly support living in an affordable city that gives you great access to your customers. Bootstrap something that has the potential for early revenue. Fail fast or succeed, and then, when you're post-exit someday, do your Next Big Thing in SF.
Re: How to Survive in SF as a Broke Startup
#26Interesting. To live here in South Africa on those numbers you'd have to make similar sacrifices, in an economy which I normally regard as 10x cheaper than (what I've heard of) SF. Some questions: 1. When I hear people on this site talking about "low" startup engineer wages in SF, the numbers I see are 60k - 80k / year. But this article makes that number look like glorious riches by comparison. Living in the dining r…
Maybe I'm misunderstanding how this site works (had this account for years but only commented a few times). It looks like my comment was downvoted, can someone explain why? Is thinking about stereotypes offensive? Or it was deemed irrelevant?
sometimes people downvote for no reason.
the reason you're not getting replies is likely because the US are asleep though.
I think it's a valid question-
although it's probably more about causation; Asian-Americans are less snobbish when it comes to areas to live, my assumption is that they live in area's that Americans wouldn't want to live anyway.
Re: How to Survive in SF as a Broke Startup
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding how this site works (had this account for years but only commented a few times). It looks like my comment was downvoted, can someone explain why? Is thinking about stereotypes offensive? Or it was deemed irrelevant?
sometimes people downvote for no reason. the reason you're not getting replies is likely because the US are asleep though. I think it's a valid question- although it's probably more about causation; Asian-Americans are less snobbish when it comes to areas to live, my assumption is that they live in area's that Americans wouldn't want to live anyway.
Are ‘Asian-Americans’ not ‘Americans’ in the first place?
Re: How to Survive in SF as a Broke Startup
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
So I guess everywhere around SF is also the same sort of price range? I mean I don't think Steve McClure cares too much if you had to drive 90 minutes to see him right? I'm just surprised at what people go to to be really in downtown SF. That money could arguably be better spent making sure that the founders/employees eat more than cup noodles for the first 6 months, if it means driving 90 minutes to go to meetings o…
There's a whole budding movement of people doing the bootstrapped thing... patio11 of course, also people like Rob Walling, Amy Hoy and lots of others. They tend to be in lots of different places, most of which are not expensive places to live. Where I am in my life, I actually find that much more appealing than the typical bay area startup, although I don't feel the need to be 'against' VC fueled startups either - t…
I think the inexpensiveness of our various locales may actually be causational. A quick survey of the people I'd consider bootstrapping peers is a wheres-where of "Places You Wouldn't Expect To See A Tech Company." Almost all of them are relatively low cost-of-living.
In my own experience in Gifu, the fact that ~$3k a month not only supported me but paid roughly market wages was enormously helpful. Had I started in SF or NYC or Tokyo, the need to have $120k a year in profit to have the same standard of living would have probably kept me tied to a desk at AmaGooBookSoft forever. (I can afford to live here in Tokyo these days, but man, $3k in rent is an awful lot of bingo cards.)
Re: How to Survive in SF as a Broke Startup
#29Why not just move somewhere else? To me, the best part of an internet company is that you can work from anywhere. Also, the money you make is usually made online, meaning it doesn't scale to your cost of living. If you make $1000/mo in ad revenue from your website, it doesn't matter if you live in SF or Portland. It's not like a wage, which changes drastically on your location. Why not move to an awesome, affordable…
I think the allure of SF is its network of entrepreneurs and the natural tech ecosystem. Entrepreneurs can certainly work anywhere in the US, but you've got to admit that SF's place as a tech hub (and its proximity to SV--think investors, mentors, tech-strong univ like Stanford and Berkeley) is hard to beat.
Re: How to Survive in SF as a Broke Startup
#30You can start a failed company in a lot of cities. Congrats on living in sf on the cheap but it really isn't useful information to help aspiring startup founders.
Running out of money is the most common way for a startup to die, so successfully living in SF on the cheap certainly mitigates that.