Hacker News Reader

Comment by foobiekr | Hacker News Reader

It's pretty weird to me someone would found a company in Michigan. In general, unless you plan to entirely bootstrap and pursue a slow-growth strategy, recruiting and selling are going to be your biggest bottlenecks. Recruiting is unnecessarily hard in places other than first and second tier tech areas - so the bay, then NY, LA, Seattle, Austin, RTP, and to a very limited extent, NoVA. Companies founded elsewhere inevitably find themselves either paying more for talent (because that talent can work remotely for 50% more than the local prevailing comp, with added stability) or starving and unable to hire. Basically, it's a question of priorities.

Also, non-competes are enforceable (§ 445.774a) for, among other things, goodwill. A not good situation for an area interested in creating a thriving tech scene.

View on HN

>It's pretty weird to me someone would found a company in Michigan.

That just demonstrated your ignorance. I advise companies in Australia, Asia and Europe. Also, I am establishing new facilities in Maryland to help international companies establish in America.

Costs matter...Baltimore is about 1/2 the price of Boston with a similar employment pool. Almost all B2B is easier if you are physically closer to your customers. in Life Science, FinTech or GovTech is a necessary.

Location matters but so does employee lifestyles. Affordable housing and family support is more important.

Commenter OP said company so your statements are fair. But if They said startup then you’d be wrong - for startups costs don’t matter initially, growth does. You get vc funds to cover costs no matter how much they are. In that regard Michigan (till Covid) wasn’t probably a great place to start a startup.

I don't think this is 100% accurate but often spoken about, particularly in tech circles. I think it's more accurate to think of it in terms of if you're not profitable, you can buy time with growth until you can find a way to become profitable. But ultimately profits (and by extension, costs) will always matter.

If you’re okay with hiring people right out of university, there’s a new crop of thousands each year. Not everyone wants to leave Michigan right away.

If a Michigan company wanted to pay anywhere near what a CA one does, they'd have talent lined up with minimal effort. Its here, but everyone is already employed and doing alright.

The cost of living in Michigan is so much lower they shouldn't need to match west coast salaries. How many first year first year engineers are able to buy a house for example on the West coast?

The ceiling is so much higher in coastal cities though. I moved right after college because I wanted to become rich. There’s not a strong path in Michigan to become rich (or even nationally upper-middle-class)

>There’s not a strong path in Michigan to become rich (or even nationally upper-middle-class)

How are you defining "nationally upper-middle class"?

They provide the same value though, right? So there should be headroom to pay close to that. If Michigan companies came even close to matching 1st tier city salaries they'd have the cream of the crop lining up around the block to join.

Ann Arbor and surrounding area is approaching Portland prices, not to mention higher taxes.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com