1) It has the same strong CA protection against non-competes as Bay Area.
2) Starting to develop some big and significant "anchor" tech companies such as Snapchat.
3) Surrounded by good universities (UCLA, USC, Caltech)
4) Main tech hubs are Santa Monica and DTLA. These will soon be connected by a new rail line (opening this month)
5) Housing is expensive, but not as bad as Bay Area. And rail line should greatly expand cheaper housing options while being able to work at a tech hub.
There are companies in Pasadena, Glendale, Burbank, Hollywood (all combined are still less than the westside), but DTLA seems to have nothing of note.
In fact the only reason I bring it up is because it's marketed towards developers, and the founder/CEO is (was?) a full-stack Python developer.
If you are being envied, that usually means you have something to be grateful for, I suppose.
Very curious about why people believe the cost differential between SF and, for instance, Austin, hasn't driven more business to Austin to reach equilibrium, and why SF continues to be so dominant compared to the others.
When Seattle has a better VC community than your city does, it is a problem. Without VC, Austin remains a great place for the engineering offices of tech companies from elsewhere, but until there are more angels and VCs in Austin, probably not the best place to start a company.
I wonder if the SF investors are willing to be more risky because $100k feels like so much less money. In Austin, that used to be an apartment in the burbs.
If you and your partner both make minimum wage for exempt employees in NYC ($70,200) then that's enough to afford an 800+ square foot apartment with good public transit access in safe, walkable neighborhood with plenty of food and recreation options. And that's without spending more than 25% of your income on rent, as is recommended.
Sure, maybe you could theoretically do better in Denver, but what's the point if NYC is the 'least livable' city and it's already more than good enough.
https://labor.ny.gov/legal/counsel/pdf/administrative-employ...
(If you take outside funding for your startup, that's going to be the minimum you're allowed to pay yourself, and statistically it's unlikely that your spouse is going to be making less than that.)
Err... no, sorry. That is obviously not true.
I do care about conveniences like access to instacart / uber / maid services / munchery though, as I don't have time to do any of that stuff since I'm working all the time.
There's been a slow roll-out to consumers, but much of SF is now covered by Webpass, Sonic, Monkeybrains, etc. Even Comcast is offering multiple-hundred mbps cable internet now. The number of techies who are materially impacted by 200mbps vs. 1,000mbps is so small to be irrelevant when talking about regional startup trends.
