Why we're moving our startup from Houston to Austin
blog.datafiniti.net
blog.datafiniti.net
As a Rice graduate, I can say that not all of us went to Google or Facebook. I stayed in Houston, for instance, despite options to go more or less wherever I wanted. High wage, low cost of living. My apartment is so much nicer than what many of my friends in SF or Mountain View are living in despite higher salaries.
The problem is I had to aggressively seek out smaller companies and start-ups here to find my current job. I can say with utmost confidence that there are some incredibly talented CS graduates coming out of Rice, completely on par with Stanford or other top schools. It is so bizarre to me that the few startups that we do have in Houston often make little to no effort at all to recruit from Rice.
There is more to life than work. Like being able to live.
Which makes it good for a start-up; if they need to fire someone, they can without cause.
> Low wages and poor health care systems.
Cost of living is a lot lower compared to New York or Silicon Valley and Houston has the best medical center in the world.
> There is more to life than work. Like being able to live.
Houston has a lot of great opportunities (being the fourth largest city in the United States). I like to consider the IMAX factor. Houston has the most IMAX theaters of any city in the United States.
Disclosure: I grew up in Houston and currently live right outside of Houston. I do hate the traffic however, though according to a recent report [0], it's not even in the U.S.'s top ten, but Austin is.
[0] http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/05/07/top-10-u-s-cities-with-t...
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1. The "pro-business" attitude is anti-startups.
For example in California non-compete's are pretty much unenforceable. No company even bothers to ask for them ( http://www.californialaborlawattorney.com/non-competition-cl... ) :
"In a few states, they are generally not legal. For example, in California, a non-compete agreement is enforceable only if someone sells a business and agrees not to compete with the new owner. That aside, California employers cannot restrict the livelihood of their current or former employees."
Eric Reis (Lean Startup) ( http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/business-brains/-8216non-com... ):
"Eric Ries, creator of the Lean Startup methodology and the author of the entrepreneurship blog Startup Lessons Learned, says that Silicon Valley’s celebrated entrepreneurial culture isn’t necessarily a result of the research universities and venture capital dollars in the area, since similar resources are available elsewhere.
Instead, he gave a lot of credit to California’s legal system in a recent interview. While the state may have more than its share of budget issues and crushing tax burdens, the entrepreneurial spirit is allowed to flourish without teams of lawyers putting a damper on things:
“[California has] the kind of legal framework that makes that doable. For example, one important difference is in California no matter what kind of employment agreement you sign, most forms of non-compete and really onerous trade secret agreements are non-enforceable in California. So if you’re working on a cool new idea in your own time without using any company resources, your employer can’t lay claim to that same invention, and therefore you’re free to incubate something on the side and then go pursue it as a company."
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2. Low wages and poor health care systems
> Cost of living is a lot lower compared to New York or Silicon Valley and Houston has the best medical center in the world.
Yes and your kids will go to shitty schools. The medical center is great if you can afford it -- but we are talking about a startup right - low wages, lots of equity.
25% of Texans are uninsured ( http://www.texmed.org/Template.aspx?id=5519 )
I would also point out that Thailand has even lower wages and a good health care system.
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There are reasons why businesses continue to stay in "high-wage" "high-cost" places like New York and California: High-value employees are there.
As a final point, the recent joke of a tour by Rick Perry to "lure" California businesses to Texas ( Read more: http://business.time.com/2013/04/24/why-is-texas-governor-ri... )
The short-term costs of relocating and the uncertainty a move brings to a business often outweigh any potential long-term benefits from setting up in a more pro-business environment. According to the Public Policy Institute of California, even with California’s history of high taxes and heavy regulation, only 2% of job losses between 1992 and 2006 were due to businesses leaving the state.
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> I grew up in Houston and currently live right outside of Houston. I do hate the traffic
I live in Silicon Valley and I use Caltrain and Light Rail a lot ( Free Wifi ). Los Angeles is building a massive rail network as fast as they can ( http://www.metro.net/interactives/metrorail_timeline/ )
Traffic? You can keep it.
I live in Houston and I just walk to work.
There are also some very walkable and hip places like Midtown and Montrose--lots of restaurants, bars, theaters, etc., all in walking distance of one another.
If you do the whole commuter suburb thing, though, then Houston could be a bad deal. Solution: don't do that.
When I do need to drive, it's never rush hour and it's not a problem.
> Yes and your kids will go to shitty schools.
There are many fantastic schools in Houston. And as far as colleges go, Rice is ranked nationally alongside Cornell. In this sense, Houston actually has better schools than San Francisco.
> There are reasons why businesses continue to stay in "high-wage" "high-cost" places like New York and California: High-value employees are there.
Houston has a major talent pool coming out of Rice that local companies are doing a poor job of exploiting. In all honesty, this talent is completely on par with that coming from Stanford, which fuels so much of the Silicon Valley start-up scene.
Oh and by the way, Obamacare is coming big-time to California: ( http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/23/california-health-i... )
In all, 13 health insurance companies will sell products on the exchange, and premiums will range from 2 percent more to 29 percent less than what comparable plans cost this year, the agency said.
Yes, in general Houston is not a walkable city at all. But you can significantly reduce your reliance on driving by just making more intelligent choices about where you live. Many people here think that they've got to go buy a house as soon as they can, so they go buy out in a suburb with a 30 minute commute because they can't afford a house in the nicer inner loop neighborhoods. I choose to just rent an apartment downtown--significantly better quality of life, incredible dining options (Houston is frequently rated the best city for restaurants in the US), stunning wooded neighborhoods nearby (River Oaks), and if I ever decide I want a house, I can just go buy one for cash in a suburb (or nearly so)--yet I still retain the option also of packing it all up and going to SF if I wanted to.