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A comment on The Decline of Investment in San Francisco Startups. Parent comment

Re:The Decline of Investment in San Francisco Startups by ThrustVectoring on Friday July 21, 2017 @01:40AM (#14818314)
Or the costs are driving potential founders out of founding. If you double your monthly costs, you double the amount you need to save in order to have enough runway to "two guys in a basement" your way into enough traction for funding. Plus you need more funding for getting enough roadway for employees and an actual business.

Maybe I'm far more mobile than others, but I'm really surprised that there isn't a wave of people trying to poach childless engineers into moving 1-4 hours out of SF to set up shop. Reno, in particular - it's 4 hours out, has actually reasonable real estate prices, and no state income tax. Maybe getting funding requires the VCs to make the trip to your office, and you're not able to just have your leadership make the trip out to SF?

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Re:The Decline of Investment in San Francisco Startups by dmode on Friday July 21, 2017 @01:49AM (#14818342)
If that was viable, people would move to Tracy or Stockton or Davis which are nearer to SF than Reno and cheaper. That's not how things work though.
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Re:The Decline of Investment in San Francisco Startups by epicureanideal on Friday July 21, 2017 @02:12AM (#14818418)
But why isn't it viable? I don't understand.
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Re:The Decline of Investment in San Francisco Startups by goseeastarwar on Friday July 21, 2017 @02:56AM (#14818587)
VC's like their investments nearby and very few people would choose to live in those cities, in particular childless engineers.

It's the same reason Twitter, even though they threatened to move their office from SF to Brisbane several years ago, absolutely would never have followed through with it. Too many of their employees would have quit immediately, and we're talking about a town that's 20 minutes away, let alone 2 hours.

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Re:The Decline of Investment in San Francisco Startups by dmode on Friday July 21, 2017 @03:11AM (#14818650)
Too add to that, repeat founders often live in the area where they start their companies. Also, if you want to poach away a top talent in a niche area, chances are they are unlikely to move far from where they are currently leaving. Example, easier for Tesla to poach from Apple vs. GM to poach from Apple
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Re:The Decline of Investment in San Francisco Startups by hkmurakami on Friday July 21, 2017 @02:29AM (#14818486)
Once you have a social circle is hard to move. Not many People are open to completely uprooting to an area where they have zero friends or family
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Re:The Decline of Investment in San Francisco Startups by vedanta on Friday July 21, 2017 @02:29AM (#14818484)
Nevada is too different, the combination of non-enforceable non-competes and the nice weather can be duplicated elsewhere in CA easiest, and this is happening. If your state has big corporate HQs forget about getting non-enforceable non-competes.
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Re:The Decline of Investment in San Francisco Startups by ghaff on Friday July 21, 2017 @08:47AM (#14819984)
No one is forcing you as a company to make employees sign a non-compete, enforceable or otherwise. I've generally lived in states where non-competes are enforceable and I've signed exactly one.
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Re:The Decline of Investment in San Francisco Startups by s73ver on Friday July 21, 2017 @01:23PM (#14822236)
I think they're speaking from the perspective of founders who, until they start the company, do have day jobs somewhere. In California, there's no issue, but in other states with enforceable non-competes, that can be a pretty big hinderance to starting the company.
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Re:The Decline of Investment in San Francisco Startups by vedanta on Friday July 21, 2017 @12:30PM (#14821800)
It's not about you or a company, once the market tolerates non-competes, employers will use them for any sort of a knowledge-based position. People will shift jobs less, wages will lower, followed by other economic effects of slightly lower wages.
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Re:The Decline of Investment in San Francisco Startups by ThrustVectoring on Friday July 21, 2017 @02:58AM (#14818592)
Wouldn't CA companies/employees not get pushed to sign unenforceable non-competes (because they're in CA, so it doesn't help the employer any, so they don't push for it in contracts)? So if you're poaching from CA anyhow...
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Re:The Decline of Investment in San Francisco Startups by vedanta on Friday July 21, 2017 @05:17AM (#14819119)
It's the employees' choice, take a lifetime of lower earnings or not, everything else being the same.
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Re:The Decline of Investment in San Francisco Startups by didibus on Friday July 21, 2017 @02:27AM (#14818469)
I find normally its the childless engineers who don't want to move out the city, because that's where the fun is at. I think that's why this isn't happening.
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