| I am bootstrapped founder who built a B2B product that lives in the bay area. I think your intuition is spot on, that living in SF is probably not the best way to save $$. That said, a few thoughts. 1) I'd recommend going somewhere where you can get coffee with your customers, so if you are picking a new location, being able to in person meet up with folks who are using your product and love it ... especially in the early days ... can make a difference between giving up on your dream and keeping going. 2) You can live cheaply in the bay area, but it's kinda of crazy. We did it with about ~30-50K - ignoring opportunity cost - 4 cofounders, no car, and more or less shopping at CostCo until we made enough $$ to pay ourselves anything. Rents have gone up, but I think it's likely still possible to get something off the ground while keeping cost of living low -- probably not living in SF though -- perhaps a suburb, or San Jose. 3) If you do plan on selling to startups, I doubt there are too many places where you'd be able to do as much door-to-door sales as you could in SF. In short, I'd recommend picking location based on your target customers as #1 priority if your goal is to build a successful business. If your #1 goal is to not work in tech again, and focus on your own stuff -- there are a lot of other places to live that are far cheaper, think -- a small college town somewhere rural -- you might have a 10-20 year runway if you have 2-5 in the bay area. |