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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

#101

Post by llukas »

nkkollaw wrote: post #85
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)

> 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.

GP comment can be backed up with news reports and with quotes of MP/government members. What do you need more?

> because you love campaigning against your own country

Democracy works best when discussion is open.

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

#102

Post by johannes1234321 »

jedberg wrote: post #88
johannes1234321 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What I do in my team is dedicate time in regular meetings for "fun talk" which is non work related, but still different from a true informal thing.

What friends of mine are doing is "nearmote" everybody still in a one or two our distance, so you can meet up on relatively short notice and can schedule regular team meetings, but also have benefits of remote.

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

#103

Post by YawningAngel »

opportune wrote: post #95
badpun wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve worked with a number of Indian and Arab people in Poland. I’ve never heard them complain, and some have settled here for good. I am sure there is some level of latent racism here, but that’s true of any society. Regarding tech companies, Poland has Google, Amazon and some pretty good game studios (CDPRed). It is not an innovation hub by any means though and most people just do regular corporate programming (fron…

Hmm, ok, maybe I'll spend a couple days in Warsaw during my trip to Tallinn and Riga. Thanks!

Warsaw isn't especially pleasant as Polish cities go.

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

#104

Post by opportune »

scottlocklin wrote: post #100
opportune wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ju…

Nomadcapitalist sells residency services. His info is good, but he has an angle and shouldn't be used as a single source of truth. I like Wroclaw (which gives you access to Ukrainian programmers also) and Lisbon myself. Since Portuguese is easier to learn, and I already have people there, it will probably be Lisbon. There was a decent overview of entrepreneur passport options on here the other week. https://docs.goog…

Yeah, I'm aware he's a consultant of some kind but from what I can tell it shouldn't be too hard to navigate the process on your own. A lot of what he focuses on are capital gains/taxes which I don't really care about too much.

Thanks for those links, super helpful, didn't know so many countries offered startup-specific visas. In that google doc spreadsheet it's missing some important investor visas (the startup visa for Estonia looks cool but since the investor visa has such low capital requirements, without digging deeper, it still looks like a better deal). And do you know the name of the program you are referencing with Wroclaw? Does Poland have some special program where you can sponsor Ukrainians' work visas there?

Just curious, what about Lisbon is so attractive to you? I know Spanish and can read most basic Portuguese but still was mostly ruling out Portugal due to what I perceived as too-small tech and entrepreneurial communities. Spain and Portugal seem like great places to work on an MVP with a couple other cofounders but I had kind of ruled them out for a place to really launch.

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

#105

Post by TulliusCicero »

nkkollaw wrote: post #85
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)

> 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.

Poland's recent rightward turn isn't fake news or even really that controversial in terms of "yes, that's a thing that happened/is happening".

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

#106

Post by babyslothzoo »

TLDR: cost of living

But leaving for another west coast city is not going to improve things much, housing and cost of living in Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, etc are also very high when compared to costs elsewhere in the USA.

The midwest and south should be aggressively courting entrepreneurs based on cost of living alone.

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

#107

Post by njepa »

sanderjd wrote: post #99
gumby wrote: post #30

This is the key part of this article (emphasis mine): > This kind of story is often framed as a tug of war between Silicon Valley and the rest of the country. But Silicon Valley isn't going any where, and for every startup or founder who leaves the Bay Area, someone else graduates from Stanford or wants to move here. This is about tech becoming a bigger part of the overall economy.

That does seem to be the crux of the article, but I find it very unsatisfying without data. It's extremely improbable that it is exactly 1 person leaving to 1 person graduating from Stanford or wanting to come. So what is the actual trend? This article doesn't know.

It is hard, if not impossible, to say. What I think one could say is that these things doesn't generally happen in the way people think. Since there is generally a lot of inertia that prevents people from seeing what is going on. People expects shifts, but it is usually more similar to leaving things on the table. Because this is hard to figure out, it is therefor instead more important to you make these decisions for good reasons. And that what I think is the real problem for the Bay Area (and other regions in a similar position). That you end up losing a lot of potential for no good reason.

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

#108

Post by newnewpdro »

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…

Tallinn's climate pales in comparison - and I wouldn't exactly call SV's climate ideal.

It practically never snows in SV.

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

#110

Post by dmode »

justboxing wrote: post #53

Ah, If I had a dollar for every time a post like this shows up on HN, I'd be a millionaire. It's either this, or some personal anecdote of how some founder took his startup to Austin, Detroit, Nashville, Seattle .. and they are kicking butt. Last I checked, San Francisco alone accounted for 25% of the V.C Money and San Francisco + Silicon Valley accounts for over 45% of V.C. Money. Source: https://www.citylab.com/lif…

There was an article voted up in HN on how we are in Peak California and Bay Area. And someone pointed out that this narrative has been going on for decades.
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