[lsc]

The thing is, the scraps from the talent wars here are, generally speaking, competitive with the best from elsewhere. Yeah, wages are a whole lot higher; but I've moved back and forth from SV to the Sacramento area several times - It's really funny how a 3 hour drive takes me from being a 'meh' employee... middle of the road kind of guy to being the go-to guy; the best on the team.

If anything, I think the talent gap makes the pay difference seem small.

The cost of living gap isn't as huge as you'd think, either; especially for the childless (and let's be honest; Illegal or not, everyone discriminates against parents. Once you have kids, well, your job just isn't your highest priority anymore, and rightly so.) I mean, in the suburbs around sacramento, you get a reasonable single family home for the price of a silicon valley condo. Let's simplify and say you pay half as much for housing. But housing is a vanishingly small part of a nerd's budget, at least until kids come. Yeah, food, gas and stuff cost a little bit more... call it 10%? not a lot more. Cars, computers, non-real-estate capital goods and gadgets cost the same or are slightly cheaper in slicon valley.

I mean, yeah, when it comes time to have kids? you have a point. But for childless nerds? silicon valley looks pretty nice.

[NickKampe]

As the founder of a bootstrapped startup, how do you expect to compete with the enormous employee salaries (which I'd like to point out is mostly due to the cost of living) being offered at other SV companies? Not to mention the various perks, such as insurance, meals, and transportation etc. that many SV companies provide. What about commercial real estate? Even in Sacramento, it's just simply not feasible.

[jvrossb]

We compete by offering a better work environment (from the perspectives of some), better problems to work on, equity in the company, and more control over the purpose and outcome of your work.

What you're arguing is empirically false. I know tons of startups in the valley that are founded by people who started elsewhere and moved here. Hardly any move back. Those that do have to because of our moronic visa system or move to Boston, Seattle, or New York.

They are almost all hiring, and they manage to find good people (not without a good amount of effort), if they can't afford offices they work out of their living rooms and that's just fine, they don't travel during rush hour so traffic is a non-issue, and if past performance is any indication of future results (which may not be true, is that what you're arguing?) they will make up a disproportionately large portion of the successful (in the admittedly uniquely SV sense) tech companies of the next few years.

[NickKampe]

> We compete by offering a better work environment (from the perspectives of some), better problems to work on, equity in the company, and more control over the purpose and outcome of your work.

While the spare bedroom of my apartment may not be many people's idea of a "better" work environment, we too offer much better problems to solve then that of other tech companies recruiting developers in our area as well as equity. Since we're such a small, close knit team, each of us certainly has the utmost potential to make giant impacts on a day to day basis, and that we do, but that's practically a given when talking about a startup.

> What you're arguing is empirically false. I know tons of startups in the valley that are founded by people who started elsewhere and moved here. Hardly any move back. Those that do have to because of our moronic visa system or move to Boston, Seattle, or New York.

I never said don't eventually migrate to the valley if it's where you feel your company needs to be to position itself for success. So long as you have the resources to be able to move your entire team and their families, as well as the capital to compete with other tech companies while recruiting - Go for it.

> They are almost all hiring

I'm sure they are, who wouldn't be when you have millions of dollars of other people money to throw around at your problems?

> they manage to find good people (not without a good amount of effort), if they can't afford offices they work out of their living rooms and that's just fine.

Touche, we have had no problems recruiting extremely talented individuals, even given the fact we hardly have any perks nor health/dental/pet benefits.

> they don't travel during rush hour so traffic is a non-issue

Sometimes there's no way of avoiding travel during peak times, so your solution just won't cut it.

> if past performance is any indication of future results (which may not be true, is that what you're arguing?) they will make up a disproportionately large portion of the successful (in the admittedly uniquely SV sense) tech companies of the next few years.

That's not what I'm arguing, overall what I'm stating is that geographic location matters very little depending on the market you're pursuing. Obviously a vast majority of the future successful startups will come from the valley strictly due to the amount of VC money being thrown around. However, don't discredit the amount of misinformation and bad advice being fed to founders, as this only further pollutes the thoughts of many to believe that Silicon Valley is the only place their company has a chance to succeed. They've got much better things to think about then what city they need to position themselves in to possibly increase their chances of success, like their product and the well being of their team.

[lsc]

> They've got much better things to think about then what city they need to position themselves in to possibly increase their chances of success, like their product and the well being of their team.

And now we get to the primary reason why I'm willing to spend extra to live here. I mean, I haven't lived in Missouri in so long that I don't really know the state of things there. But I do know that being a nerd in rural California towns? Socially speaking, it's a matter of 'passing' - It's no fun. This is the cultural centre for my people.

This facebook bubble will blow over within the year; It comes, it goes, and from what I've seen, this merry-go-round is about out of juice. Come visit us after that and see what it's like when investors aren't throwing silly money after dumb ideas; after most of the suits go back to selling amway, and after the brogrammers decide to go back to school for their MBAs, it will once again be just us nerds.

Anyhow, really? I'd not worry about it too much. One of the primary advantages small companies have is that we can hire remote workers. And having remote workers gives you a staggeringly large pool to choose from (if you are good at picking people, you can get really good people for not all that much money.) it really is the best of both worlds; you get the 'low expected salary' of the midwest with the giant pool of applicants of the coastal population centres.

For me personally? living here is worth the added costs. Hell, I never really felt like an American until I moved here. Elsewhere in the country, I've always been 'the other' - and for me? I'm willing to pay rather a lot extra for that. That is true of a lot of technical people. I /do/ suggest visiting- maybe even while this bubble is still ongoing. It can be a lot of fun. But yeah, unless you are going for funding (and unless you are the sort of person that can only communicate face-to face) it's probably not a make-or break kind of thing.

All I wanted to point out was that on average, salaries are not as much higher here as you think. Salaries and expectations are both much higher, and that can even out in the end.

(Of course, small companies rely on finding the inefficiencies. The people that are good but underpaid. Small businesses have massive advantages over large companies when it comes to evaluating people and making trade-offs. On top of that, evaluating people is really difficult. Extremely difficult in the interview context, so lots of mistakes are made.)

[lsc]

>As the founder of a bootstrapped startup, how do you expect to compete with the enormous employee salaries

I don't. But I couldn't compete with the salaries in Sacramento, either. Let's put it this way; I paid myself something like $40K last year (salary/profit whatever... I spent $40K on me last year)

Obviously, I'm unable to pay market rates for experienced/connected people.

Right after the .com crash it was easy. Even through the mid '00s, I was picking up people I knew personally that had worked with me during the dot-com that were now stuck making sandwiches. "I can't give you much of a raise, but I can give you a raise and work that counts as experience towards what you want to do."

Of course, that's harder now. My latest two contractors are one very raw recruit who is local, and one reasonably good person that is in the midwest and doesn't want to move.

I mean, you find someone that could be good, then you train them, then you give them maximum flexibility and hope they stick around for a while. Yeah, they move on, and that's okay... they then become the best resources for finding your next local raw recruit.

(for an example of 'maximum flexibility' I don't have any set hours; my employee shows up at the office maybe once a week, usually unplanned, and he often takes off on vacation with short notice. I mean, yeah, Facebook has 'pet insurance' and they probably tolerate you rolling in at eleven, but they expect you to be in the office most of the time.)

But yeah, you hire when the economy is shit, and you do what you can to hold on when the economy is gangbusters.

The thing is, the people you want (as customers, mentors, and employees) are thick on the ground here. Like I was saying, for the same skill? I don't even think you pay more here, because standards are just that much higher.

> What about commercial real estate? Even in Sacramento, it's just simply not feasible.

really? huh. The only reason I don't own a santa clara 'industrial condo' right now is that my credit is shit. (well, that and I don't have a whole heck of a lot to use as a down.) warehouse space here can be had in the $100-$200 per sqft range, and you look at layfayette near el camino (a not awesome part of santa clara, but still, part of santa clara) and you see nice big industrial condos starting at about $150K. You can rent in santa clara, 1000-2000sqft places for $0.50-$1.00 per sqft. (I'm talking essentially industrial units... but that's what I want.)

So yeah, uh, I guess I don't really see real-estate as a limiting factor. (I mean, yeah, if you want to be in mountain view, it's rather more expensive. But, I don't see why you would want to be in mountain view where you have to compete with google for real-estate when you can move to Santa Clara and have incredibly cheap power and incredibly cheap dark fiber provided by the city.)

Again, I think the key to understanding the economics is that while salaries are higher here, the standards for Engineer skill are proportionally higher as well.

[NickKampe]

I'm 22 years old, so I was about 10 years old around the time of the .com crash. Therefore I like every other founder my age never really had the luxury of building a vast network of talented individuals through prior work experiences in a decent economy. Not to say a few of us hadn't worked together with one another in the past, just that the economy has honestly had no effect on us being able to hire on creative talent. Recruiting and training team members has never been an issue for us - We've developed quite the knack for attracting the very best and brightest.

With that said, not one of our team members have completed their degree, and I'd be willing to bet every one of our developers, myself included, are equally if not more skilled then anyone you'd potentially pit against us against from the valley. Our standards are equally as high, as we enjoy working with "A" people, and we don't tolerate anything less. We don't discriminate based on educational merits as they mean absolutely nothing to us, and that allows us to recruit individuals from all walks of life. Also, since we're so close to the University of Missouri (Mizzou) as well as St. Louis and Kansas City, we're able to pick up university educated graduates if we so desire (which so far, we haven't).

We work M-F out of the spare bedroom of my apartment from anytime after noon til early into the morning. Some of our team members live together, and some have families to support. (not to mention we all grew up in the Midwest, and our entire families live around the area) Since we're bootstrapping we're on a very tight budget, so needless to say real-estate is definitely a limiting factor for us, and California is expensive no matter where you choose to reside.

While I do agree that customers, mentors, and employees are abundant on the coast, I'd argue that our geographic location is a blessing. Not only is it superb for our market (Independent music), but the entrepreneurial community in Columbia Missouri is exceptionally strong, intimate and full of helpful mentors, networking events, competitions, and resources.

[lsc]

huh. Cool. I was born in Missouri[1] - I didn't stick around too long, though, and don't really remember what it's like. Ticks and hippies, I remember. oh man. or are they chiggers? either way, they creep me out. burrowing insects. guh.

But yeah, the dot-com bubble had a tremendous effect on my life; if I waited four years to get a job, degree or no, it would have been many years before I would have been able to find proper employment. I was incredibly lucky in that I came of age just in time to leverage the low standards of the height of the dot-com boom. (I was then able to gain enough knowledge, experience and connections that I was able to continue working through the crash. I think I can take credit for making good use of the opportunity; but I wouldn't have had the opportunity if I tried to start doing the same thing in 2001 or 2002.)

California really is all about the boom and the bust. But this part of California, specifically, is interesting in it's cultural makeup. I can go to parties where I know one person, and I'll meet three customers. I sell a product targeting highly technical users, and I feel that it's reasonable to advertise in the local Safeway. (I'm not the only one that feels this way; recurrent, a company that refurbishes old Ciscos and other 'enterprise' kit advertises in another local Safeway. I don't know if they started doing it after I did it, or if I just didn't notice them until after I started doing it, but either way, it's not a crazy idea like it would be in Sacramento.)

There certainly are good technical people elsewhere in the world; I didn't mean to say that there aren't, though I can see how my comments could be read that way, but the density is tremendous here, and the expectations really are higher. (note, when you say "a player" it's like saying 'C-level" - you sound like a suit.) From what I've seen, people in the midwest that are really, really good? they can telecommute to here. The standards, from what I've seen, for the telecommute jobs are even higher (well, that or the pay is lower. Sometimes both! companies recognize and exploit the fact that many people would much rather work from home and would much rather live in a place with a lower cost of living.) I'm just saying, the kid who wasn't quite good enough to get a job here? is probably good enough to get a job just about anywhere else. (of course, what you really want are the people that don't get the job, not because they aren't technically good, but because they don't have the social bullshit down or something like that.)

[1]http://eastwind.org/ moving back there would be, perhaps,