[arohner]

Counterfactuals are very hard to know. At CircleCI, being in SF gave numerous advantages early on. We had multiple paying customers in the first two office buildings. We had multiple customers within walking distance, and many more within cycling distance. Being able to talk to real customers using the app was extremely valuable.

Customers aside, there are tons of people willing to help, either through advice or introductions. There's an entire ecosystem who understand startups, and have been there.

My failed started before that was in Austin, Tx, and the startup density just wasn't there at the time (2009).

Not every developer in SF is as mercenary as you make it sound. For your first employee hire, you might find a single person living in an apartment in SF vs. a family man in St. Louis who has to pay for day care and save for college. Their salary requirements might be comparable. [Edit: my point here is not to say that SF people are only single, and STL people only have kids, but that salaries are a distribution, and that there are places where the SF and STL distributions overlap, based on the individual's experience, desires and stage in their life.]

[JPKab]

"Not every developer in SF is as mercenary as you make it sound. For your first employee hire, you might find a single person living in an apartment in SF vs. a family man in St. Louis who has to pay for day care and save for college. Their salary requirements might be comparable."

This is based on a ridiculous premise:

1) That a highly paid professional in a city BRIMMING with recruiters and cool new companies throwing themselves at them isn't going to respond to market pressures and/or "the shiny new company" effect when you reach a certain growth point

2) That a "family man in St. Louis" will cost something comparable due to this odd concept unique to flyover country of having a family.... oh wait, people in the Bay Area have kids too.

I'm sorry, but there is a huge amount of delusion in San Fran about the advantages of physical proximity. I'm not idiotic enough to believe there aren't huge advantages, but it seems as if there is absolutely no point (that HN folks are willing to acknowledge) where the cost of being in San Fran and having to pay your talent at grossly inflated rates actually MORE THAN CANCELS OUT the benefits.

[arohner]

I'm not claiming there aren't huge downsides to being in SF. I'm claiming

- there are some advantages, but it depends

- the advantages depend on your target market, the stage of your company, and your desired direction, in terms of bootstrapping vs. raising

- you can't know ahead of time which way (SF vs. STL) will be more advantageous, and you can't repeat the experience, because the second time you'll have more experience, more talent, etc. This is a path-dependent experience.

Maybe if they did the startup in SF, they'd meet an advisor who changed the direction of the company to something even better, or maybe they wouldn't, in which case low cost of living in STL is an advantage. But pointing at cost-of-living alone isn't a useful comparison.

[glitch003]

There is some quantitative truth to what he said, actually. San Francisco does have more single people than other cities, and in fact has almost 12% more single people than St. Louis does. So probabilistically speaking, there is a higher chance that someone you hire in SF will be single (and therefore more likely to put in looong hours) than someone you hire in St. Louis (who may be strict in going home at 5pm to be with family).

Source: SF has 44.7% single people, St. Louis has 32.9% single people

http://www.bestplaces.net/docs/studies/solocities_list1.asp

[JPKab]

Good point, but I think we all know that long hours aren't sustainable day after day after day.

As a guy who has worked 13 hour days while having a kid when it was required (as well as 2 night binges on the weekends prior to a Monday launch), I do get sick of the "less likely to work late when its needed" stigma against married people. I'll work late when its needed, in bursts. What I won't do is work 80 hours a week for 3 months so my boss can continue on with the delusion that I'm being as productive as 2 people working 40. We all know that's bullshit, and science says so.

Its funny, because the 20 something single guys I work with (anecdotal of course) don't seem to be willing to sacrifice personal time. They'll work late on a Tuesday, but getting them to work late on a Friday or come in on a Saturday? Not happening.

[rhc2104]

CircleCI allows their software developers to work remotely, so that's kind of the best of both worlds.

[tptacek]

If you're selling products to developers, it is helpful to be in San Francisco. But if you're selling non-developer products to businesses, it can be unhelpful, because you want a diversity of clients and because tech companies have NIH objections at a scale that normal enterprise customers don't.

The subtext of your point about the STL person having kids is a little icky. You might want to reframe that point.