You said you left the Valley. Where'd you go? How do you like it?
I'm in New York. In 2005-7, it just seemed obvious that if you were young and wanted to have a career, you moved to the Valley or New York. However, I don't think it's that way anymore (if it ever was).
I'm trying to figure out where the future is, because the Bay Area's been parasitized by NIMBY and acq-hires and lost its vitality, and New York VC-istan's pretty damn uninspiring. Austin and Seattle seem like strong candidates.
I'd personally pick Austin if I were looking for an already established major tech hub that is not one of the coasts. It's got a fun atmosphere too, lots of music and good night life.
I would also look at Atlanta, Boulder, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Detroit. The latter is a really interesting contrarian pick: ultra-cheap real estate, neat history, and an interesting subculture of hacker/maker types.
Austin's changing and we have plenty of people more interested in the douchey vc tech scene than building cool products.
The cost of living is (for now) cheaper than SV or NYC but housing is hard to come by and the live music scene is getting pushed out of its old stomping grounds by luxury condos every freaking block.
I'm hoping one day to live in detroit. I keep hearing cool things going on there (even in other fields such as urban ag) so that potential mixed in with the actually livable real estate (It's sickening up here in NYC just listening to friends talk about how much rent is for what they are getting), and I wouldn't call myself a contrarian but I definitely one to try to find even if that means if I'm taking pieces here and there of others ways.
On the bad side, there is still this feeling of lingering racism throughout the entire area. The city itself is very poor, with the exception of a few neighborhoods. And outside of those stable/safe neighborhoods (and even within them to some degree), the city has this vast feeling of emptiness. Like it's Berlin after the bombings but everyone left.
Real Estate values are so low that you literally have one guy (Dan Gilbert) building his own Delta City downtown. It's not a bad thing to have a billionaire so committed to making a great downtown, just a little odd and strange that no other regional wealth holders have really stepped up. Gilbert is doing his damnedest to make Detroit a place favorable for start-up entrepreneurs. He's associated with groups like TechTown, Detroit Venture Partners, and BizDom U. There's also a pretty reasonably sized 'old-school' tech economy here from the auto industry. IBM, HP and Microsoft have big offices in the suburbs. Lots of people here work on mainframes, industrial HR software, factory automation, and the like. If you want to make software that has effects on real physical objects, no better place to do it than here.
On the good side you will never find a more committed group of people than those who are working to make Detroit better. Groups like the Detroit Mower Gang and the Hub of Detroit are great. It's pretty inspiring what many of these groups are doing. Architecturally, Detroit is absolutely astounding. For the price of a 1br in San Francisco or Manhattan you can purchase yourself a beautiful mansion that your friends on the coasts could only dream of. At one point Detroit was referred to as the 'paris of the midwest', and it really shows in the buildings that remain. You probably won't ever have to worry about a lack of affordable housing. If you are looking for some international flavor, Canada is just across the border and Detroit is ~4 hours drive (or a train ride) from both Chicago and Toronto. The region also has the largest Arab population in the USA. As well as large Japanese, Indian, Korean, Mexican and Vietnamese population centers.
Detroit isn't like other cities where the people in the region associate with the Central city. Philly and Baltimore have bad reps but people in Montgomery County or Baltimore County still defend their city. Up until recently (and still in the older generation) many people in the suburbs of Detroit simply don't care about the Central City, and actually take pleasure in seeing it burn. Regionally, the greater Detroit area's economy is actually pretty ok. It's just that none (or very little) of that wealth made it through to the city.
Depends on where you live. Many neighborhoods have private security forces. The area around Wayne State University also has police protection from the University's own security force.
Outside of those areas it can get pretty dicey depending. But ymmv. You have to know your neighbors and in some cases rely on their eyes in the neighborhoods.
The Detroit area in general is a pretty fine place to live. Good food, loads of great things to do outdoors (if that's your thing) which varies wildly by season, and it's quite cheap to live. It's very car-centric and owning one is practically required to get around, but if you're fine with that it's pretty all right.
As another data point, I've found Philly to have a lively and close-knit startup culture, albeit much smaller than NYC and SV. Gabe Weinberg (founder of DuckDuckGo) keeps an on-going list of links related to the Philly startup scene: http://foundedinphilly.com
I'd be curious to hear what ways you think Philly can improve.
Cool, I'm familiar with Gabe and salute his efforts. The city badly needs him/them. I was born in the city and went to college there so I hope it can become greater than what it is. The main thing, imho, that needs to happen, is to get the word out amongst college-aged people in the area and the attraction of more venture funding. The general attitude of the people there is what pg refers to in one of his essay's as the 'default'; graduate and work in a large corporation. This formula is not working anymore and the startup attitude needs to affect Philly and the rest of the country proportionally to the new state of affairs.
"Its dangerous reputation is mostly just reputation, but don't leave valuables in your car. Vehicle smash-and-grab crime is very high."
It has a dangerous reputation for a reason. Detroit hasn't really been safe for 10+ years. I lived in the area for 25+. Nearly everyone I know that lived in or around the city was held up, saw gun crime, or mugged.
I know two people that were shot in the middle of the day for being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Luckily, neither of them were fatal.
Another issue is that if you do have an emergency, the police/ambulance most likely won't get to you for many hours.
If you want a good tech scene, pick a city like Ann Arbor or Grand Rapids.
I'm from the UK and relying on the internets, but from my perspective anyone pretending that the Bay Area's still not the place to be right now has completely lost perspective. It literally has an order of magnitude more activity or even two in startups than anywhere else.
I moved to SF in 2009 and left because a product I made got acquired by an NYC company. I lived in NYC from 2010-2012, then moved back. Although things have changed so much here that sometimes I have second thoughts!
There are some things you can point to as indicators (e.g. rents have doubled). But I have a harder time gauging the sort of atmosphere/ethos and whether that's changed or I have.
(note I'm not affiliated with startups here at all, I actually have a boring corporate job in the suburbs. I just love seeing Detroit get back on its feet as a city)
All joking aside, what are your ambitions? Do you intend / desire to found a startup yourself? Do you want a job in a startup? Do you want a nice, safe, boring corporate job? Do you want to be a consultant? Freelancer? Wall street hedge fund manager? Other?
Anyway, if you are at all interested in the startup world, want to live somewhere without all of the hubris and pomposity of the Bay Area, and somewhere with a reasonable cost-of-living and a nice climate, come check out the Triangle (Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill) area of North Carolina.
Despite what you may have heard, the entire state isn't a right-wing, christian fundamentalist, redneck backwater with nothing but hog farms, tobacco farms, and cotton. The Triangle area is home to the largest research park in the world[1], and has a burgeoning startup scene[2], especially around the revitalized downtown Durham[3][4]. And we just had another tech IPO from a Triangle area company today[5]. Heck, we even had a local company win $50,000 on a CNBC reality show[6].
Seriously, there's a lot going on here and it's a pretty nice area to live in. With all 3 of the vertices of the "triangle" being "college towns" to some extent (Durham: Duke U., Chapel Hill: UNC - Chapel Hill, Raleigh: NC State University) there are plenty of young people here, and with all the big companies in the park (IBM, Cisco, Glaxo, tons more) there is a very diverse and multi-cultural population as well. Durham/Chapel Hill rank as the #4 city on the "most educated city in the US" listings[7] as well. And Wake County (Raleigh/Cary) has some of the best public schools in the country[8]. So, yeah, while the stereotypes about the South may have some truth to them, NC (especially this part) probably isn't anything like what you'd expect if you haven't been here (or aren't from here).
I'm in New York. In 2005-7, it just seemed obvious that if you were young and wanted to have a career, you moved to the Valley or New York. However, I don't think it's that way anymore (if it ever was).
I'm trying to figure out where the future is, because the Bay Area's been parasitized by NIMBY and acq-hires and lost its vitality, and New York VC-istan's pretty damn uninspiring. Austin and Seattle seem like strong candidates.