[jordow]

I was originally from Seattle where I was an engineer at Amazon for a couple years before moving to the bay area. Seattle is an incredibly livable place. If you feel yourself getting bothered by the rain, just remind yourself that the rain cleans out the air and produces the greenest, freshest natural beauty that you can find on the West coast. Hands down - better summer climate than anywhere. If you're doing a startup, do you really leave your computer anyways? Just save it for when the weather's nice. I don't know why Seattle doesn't have as large of a startup scene. It's got a huge tech scene, no doubt, and it has every ingredient in the mix to foster a large startup community (smarts, companies, UW, coffee, good beer). Most of all, it seems more business friendly. In particular - the economic climate seems more startup friendly. You could get a really decent place to rent for 800 dollars a month. The transportation has gotten much better with the underground train/bus tunnel. About seven days a week there's almost always a killer happy hour where you could eat gourmet food for under ten dollars - much better than the food I've had in the Bay Area. Also, there's no state income tax. If you're looking to buy a house, I believe that all things considered, your house purchase dollars go five times further in the Seattle area. - And you're just an hour and a half flight away from the South Bay. It seems you could live there and be very frugal, and spend your credit card miles commuting to the bay area once every other week - and still come out ahead. I haven't been back there in a year, but I hear the startup community is getting even stronger. I hope it does well as a startup hub.