[tptacek]

I've got a company in Chicago; we're in the process of outgrowing our third office in 2 years. I can (have, in fact) given a litany of reasons why Chicago can be a better choice than the bay area, where my last company ran out of.

(Half my company is in Manhattan, but our revenue isn't 50/50).

I have friends in Indy with a thriving, well-funded company in the telephony space; I'll try to get one of them to chime in with why they moved their company from NYC metro to Indiana.

Prior to Matasano, I spent 4 years at a VC-funded startup in Ann Arbor, MI --- Arbor Networks. Being in the middle of nowhere is great for the company and crappy for the employees; Arbor was the only credible option for a developer with a mortgage in Ann Arbor, so most of the team was stuck.

[time_management]

Why was Ann Arbor "crappy for the employees"? I think it would be a pretty nice place to live.

[tptacek]

Ann Arbor is actually a pretty excellent place to live, especially if you have kids. They get what I perceive to be a better than average share of touring bands, both in Ann Arbor and in Detroit. The quality of restaurants is fairly high. Lots of good cafes. The city and central campus is walkable. Leopold's and Old Town are good bars, as is Ashley's on the off season. And you get Zingermans, which is a force of nature.

Housing costs are higher than average (lots of people move to Dexter and Ypsi to get around this, but then you lose "walkable"), and there isn't a huge amount of capacity, and you have to deal with students and avoid student housing.

Great school system. Good parks. Lots of kids.

It's a fine place live. But it's a crappy place to relocate to: if your job starts to suck, or god forbid you lose it, where else are you going to work? The University, for 40% of your current salary?

When you're 20, this is not a big deal. You lose your job, you move somewhere else. When you're 30, you start wanting to own a home. If you have a mortgage, and you don't have a lot of cushion in your bank account (young people with houses often don't), you need 3-6 months warning to relocate.

If you have kids, regardless of whether you rent or own, moving is A Big Deal. I moved back to Chicago instead of NYC because I needed to commit to my family that I wasn't going to uproot them again.