Expenses in Silicon Valley are high and show no sign of declining. Even more important it is hard to find qualified staff in SV who are interested in working on start-ups that don't have strong funding. Most companies therefore look for a somewhat lower cost place with qualified engineers and have done this for a while now. At some point you have to ask why not just put the whole company somewhere else.

And your choice of neighborhood has relaxed a bit, if you hate commuting. Even the east side/west side split is breaking down (.Net downtown now, and Java in Bellevue)

For example, if you take numbers from comparison tools like www.numbeo.com cost of living in Seattle is not much less than SV locations like San Jose.

But I do think it's possible to make half the salary in Seattle and still not spend 40+% of your income on housing. But I haven't rented in a while and I've heard it's getting harder.

The thing is that if you know how to live frugally, being in an expensive town for a while can work in your favor, as long as you promise yourself you'll take the money and run. If you meet Mr or Ms Right before you get out though you may well be in trouble.

a nice apartment close to work in greater seattle area is 2.4 - 4k a month for a two bedroom.

buying will cost you $5k+ unless you are putting a big chunk down, and that just seems to keep going up without missing a beat.

i would say its not possible to take a 50% cut and come here, unless you want to spend a lot of time commuting or hearing lots of sirens at night.

;)

(Source: https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-hi-id-like-to-add-you/)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Arrillaga

Yes, this is a bet on rising home prices in the Bay Area, but that seems basically equal to a bet on the Bay Area tech ecosystem, which is already their core business.

I've lived in 'man camps' on remote jobs where it was easier to just put up trailers for workers than put them all in hotels. Or sometimes there isn't any temporary housing options available so you get to stay in the man camp. Pretty sure programmers aren't going to fall into line for that option though.

Life imitates art...

Incubators yes. But exchanging a place to stay for equity (as OP alluded to) is mostly in the realm of the show although it has happened a few times in real life as well...

Example: http://fusion.net/story/134163/silicon-valleys-startup-castl...

I don't accumulate as much stuff as some do, but I'd say $12k/year in extra discretionary cash (not just throughput to a landlord) is more than adequate compensation for the risk of a cross-town move.

Maybe that suggests that these incubators should be owning rather than renting. Your investment in property is generally going to be recoverable if you have to kick out a failed startup.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Arrillaga

Granted, if you can't afford rent in SV you might want to reconsider joining a YC class. It's a tough decision for sure.

So that he and his peers think that continuing to live like you did in college isn't that big of a logical leap when you consider that their interview process feels exactly like a final exam in college, despite the fact that you and I and indeed Google's own success stories know the difference between theory and practice.

I thought that's exactly what people in the startup world glorified.

Not to mention you can get Google Fiber in parts of KS, but stuck on dial-up or DSL in areas of SV.

http://overlandpark.maps.arcgis.com/apps/Viewer/index.html?a...

[1]: https://m.tuftandneedle.com/if-you-re-building-a-startup-you...

I've always been skeptical of the whole "advice from billionaires" format. Brin isn't motivated to help startups the same way Warren Buffet isn't giving away hot stock tips or how Gates never gave the FOSS community an easy way to reverse-engineer the doc format. These people know how their bread gets buttered. Or simply have internalized protectionist attitudes and give away just enough to not be dangerous to themselves.

edit: I'm not necessarily projecting malice, but there are other reasons why "advice from billionares" is kinda a bullshit format. Brin may be out of touch or, if you read the source of the article, made an off-hand comment he probably doesn't worry about all night and is blown out of proportion by the 'give us the latest hot investing tip' crowd.

Me too. But it's not like it's unfounded advice. The things you need to start a company (time, knowledge, morale) are all significantly more expensive, and therefor less accessible, in SV.

The problem with "how I got successful" advice is, even when its honest, is fairly dependent on that one person's experience. Most success has more to do with getting lucky or being at the right place at the right time, than purely merit. That Kansas startup may have a lot of merit, but a less meritorious startup actively "working the room" in SV will have a strong advantage.

I suspect you'd learn more from the guy who had five failed startups in a row than the guy who hit a homerun on his first time to bat. Again, the "advice from billionaires" format is really a bizarre thing. Its the closest thing secular society has to the Delphi oracle and from what I can tell is usually borderline dishonest or just a lot of pleasantries/PR for said billionaire. It does get ad impressions though, so I imagine this is why we keep seeing this type of format over and over again.

Maybe Brin's advice made sense in the 90s but is questionable today. Or maybe he's woefully out of touch. Or maybe he's being dishonest. Or maybe its just a throwaway comment that he never really thought about too strongly and is being sold by the tech press as "The New Hot Tech Tip!" Unfortunately, its impossible to tell.

I think you mean YC here :)

It's always been more expensive in Silicon Valley.

I would agree that Silicon Valley is probably not a good place to start a low-margin business.

Market participants have chosen to start and grow tech businesses in Silicon Valley, so economic opportunity must exist despite seemingly high costs.

That's cynical, but I'd say we have the right to be somewhat cynical after reading those emails.

I would not be surprised if poaching concerns are foremost for the higher ups at these giant tech companies.

There is an advantage for a billionaire to help startups get better - someday they can acquire the talent, product, etc. Remember that acquisition is a form of recruitment, too.

But for whom? That startup is just as likely picked up by Microsoft, Facebook, or Apple than Google.

I wasn't comparing 1998 Stanford technology to 2016 AWS as if it was apples to apples. The "AWS" was a modern analogy to give an idea of what they didn't have to spend money on compared to other startups. In 1997, if you didn't have a university to host your (potential business) website, what were the options? You could call up one of the IBM/HP/Origin managed data centers and have them rack some servers. But that costs money, and requires a contract, etc, etc.

The university charged NCSA for the privilege of occupying the tenth shittiest building on campus. And we joked about what other crappy building they'd gift us when they finally got around to giving us the space we had requested. Their definition of building us new space was to build a building for someone else and give us their hand me downs.

And of course they owned all the IP and charged a pretty big tax on all of the income. I'm fairly certain we brought in almost as much money as the football program (who got a stadium upgrade the same year class sizes were increased to save money).

I have no illusions of Stanford having a more generous program. All that free stuff isn't actually free.

https://web.archive.org/web/19981212020629/http://rackspace....