Comment by ambiate | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ambiate | Hacker News Reader

I compare Austin to little San Francisco. Texas is not the South. Wipe that stereotype from your mind.

I live in Waco, TX. Two hours from the hearts of Austin, Fort Worth and Dallas.

First: Internet. With Google Fiber and Grande Communications, internet speeds are insane. Datacenters are abundant and in every direction. I can drive to colos.

Second: Texas is multi-geographical. You can head south towards San Antonio/Austin for amazing caves and mountains. You can head west for a huge desert. You can head southwest for a near rain forest experience. You can head east for an experience more akin to LA/MS. Southeast gets you the beaches. I'm literally 2-4 hours in every direction from experiencing a different Texas. Memorial day weekend, we climbed and caved the Enchanted Rock near Austin. The drive through zoo in Glen Rose is amazing (giraffes eating from my hand through the sunroof!). Aquariums, museums, galleries, and exhibits passing through all the time.

Third: There is oil money here. Lots of 'old' money. If you know how to use that advice to your advantage, you'll win the Texas game.

Fourth: 2000 square foot home with a huge yard in the middle of the city cost me $75,000. Old buildings and banks from the 30s are getting auctioned off by the city for 5-25k on a monthly basis.

Fifth: Texans do not like leaving Texas. My university colleagues have settled for SQL CRUD jobs in Austin/Dallas. Data science and bioinformatics is a common degree around these parts. They would rather do CRUD than have to leave Texas.

I never thought I would settle here. In fact, I had the San Francisco dream. Yet, once I visited SF, I realized I would be a millionaire in Texas. With our 1700 sq foot 2 bedroom apartment, we easily lived off $950/mo. SF has opportunities, but to be honest, I'm just not the type to apply myself to utilize those opportunities.

Not all of Texas is cheap. In fact, some areas are extremely expensive.

I've noticed that when people compare San Francisco to Texas they are almost always comparing apples to oranges. They'll pick an area of Texas which is not at all analogous to San Francisco and point out how cheap it is. But if you look at areas which are more analogous, like nice neighborhoods in the center of Houston, you'll find that decent houses are now $800k-$1M.

There is absolutely no way you would get even a plot of dirt for $75k in the nicer neighborhoods of Houston in the middle of the city. The dirt alone will cost you $300k at least. And that's a low estimate.

You can get ~2000 sqft single family homes in the Montrose area of Houston for around $400,000. Still a hell of a lot cheaper than SF.

I grew up in the Bay Area and moved to Houston (now San Antonio) about seven years ago. No desire to move back.

You'll be really pushing it to find a detached house in a safe area of Montrose for that price. You might be able to get a townhouse, though, which will come with huge HOA fees, so it's not as cheap as it sounds.

In general, though, Montrose and Midtown are actually two of the least safe areas of the loop to live in. They're gentrified party and bar areas for the most part--great when you're young and want night life, but they aren't generally seen as areas to settle down with a family. Eastwood, statistically, is actually safer than Midtown despite still looking very sketchy in some areas.

West University, a common place to settle down with a family in the loop, is twice as expensive, at least.

Which is why families head to Katy and Pearland.

The schools out there are also fantastic.

Yes, but now we're already comparing apples to oranges. Those suburban areas, with their huge commutes, aren't even remotely analogous to living in San Francisco.

For clarification, I love the fact that there are cheap suburbs outside of Houston. And I think for the vast majority of families here, they'd be much better off going out to such a suburb than blowing money they don't have on a small house in the Heights or Bellaire or West U. One of the great advantages of Houston over SF is that you have the option of getting affordable housing if you're willing to live out in suburbia.

I just think it's important to be clear that you're not going to replicate the SF city lifestyle in Houston for cheap. It's going to cost you a very considerable amount of money, though admittedly less than in SF. Downtown apartments in Houston are definitely cheaper than SF, though--my 1300 sq ft 2br apartment is $1950/month, and it is quite nice and in walking distance of my office. I could never buy a house in this area, though.

Fair enough.

I was close to moving down to Montrose but decided to head to San Antonio instead. Geekdom[1] has some great things go for it over here.

[1] http://geekdom.com/san-antonio/

Cool, thanks for the link! I've been thinking of looking at other cities here in Texas like Austin and San Antonio. Like you I have no desire to move to the Bay Area, other than maybe the job scene. I've found Texas to be a really cool place overall, definitely under-appreciated.

You should come check out Geekdom. We hosted TechStars Cloud this year (and will for the foreseeable future). Lots of cool startups working here. My email is my profile if you ever make it out here.

Plus, our benefactor Graham Weston, one of the co-founders of Rackspace, just bought us our own building in downtown San Antonio. Right now we're in another office building he owns but this one will be entirely ours.

http://www.mysanantonio.com/default/article/Geekdom-moving-t...

I'm with you - I grew up in Texas, and never thought I'd end up here after college. Increasingly, I'm actually thinking that I'll never leave.

Don't forget FiOS when you are discussing internet connectivity options - they started their rollout in Keller, just north of Fort Worth, and still have a strong presence in many parts of Texas.

I really wish the lack of a statewide startup culture (and what could be done to fix it) could get more discussion. There's some notable activity in Austin, but - for a state that supposedly prides itself on entrepreneurship, business friendliness, "pulling yourself up by the bootsraps" and the like, there's not many startups here.

Third: There is oil money here. Lots of 'old' money. If you know how to use that advice to your advantage, you'll win the Texas game.

Intriguing. Explain.

I've been studying geography for a few months to try to pick out where the future is. Austin seems a strong candidate. Boston and Seattle could also swing back into #2.

What TX has going for it is that (a) it has a lot of money, (b) it has a lot of smart people, and (c) it's actually not that conservative in the cities. (I grew up in rural PA, so I know all about the fact of red/blue being meaningless, except on a few issues, at a state-by-state level.)

Fifth: Texans do not like leaving Texas. My university colleagues have settled for SQL CRUD jobs in Austin/Dallas. Data science and bioinformatics is a common degree around these parts. They would rather do CRUD than have to leave Texas.

Seems like a great place to move when you're ready to be a founder (i.e. if you can raise money) because there's a lot of talent. However, this would go against people who are looking to be employees, because there's more competition.

Is that an accurate assessment?

Not much oil money. A lot of gas money. The Barnett Shale being one of the big cash crops http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnett_Shale

Most of my friends seem to be bankers, on a board, or loan officers of some sort. This was not by intention. It just seems everyone is connected and has their fingers dipped in money. It is insanely easy to build connections. I had an oil company offering a huge contract for a simple mobile reporting app on pipeline issues.(Also, Seattle is a great #2)

Oddly, there is not actually that much competition. As I said, most of the people I knew fell into CRUD jobs around their original homes. From a typical perspective: Northrup Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Level 3, TI, etc are always hiring new people. There are many manufacturing companies here for the electrically/computing engineer inclined. Level 3 is scoping out people from our building on a daily basis trying to buyout talent.

As far as start ups, I figure your main audience is on the wire. It does not matter if you're in TX, CA, NY, etc. Mentor over the wire. Audience over the wire. Testing over the wire. Servers spread over the world on the wire.

My brother bought a 6000 sq. ft. house in Frisco, TX (an hour from Dallas/Fort Worth) for $650k last year. That kind of house in SF/LA would probably cost around $2-3M.

That is definitely true for Seattle as well (Seattle prices are more like LA than Texas). House prices in Texas are very low. I do miss that about Texas.

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