Why I'm Moving My Business From San Francisco To St. Louis
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San Francisco is incredibly expensive. Rents have shot up by ~50% since 2008, office space is following the same trend, and competition for (even mediocre) programmers is intense. Worse, a lot of the cultural diversity that made San Francisco interesting has been driven out by the high prices -- it's a much more homogenous city than a few years ago, where mom-and-pop shops and other neighborhood amenities have been replaced by places selling $10 "artisinal grilled cheese" sandwiches and "mixology" bars where you can buy your choice of $15 cocktail. SF feels increasingly like a city for wealthy yuppies, because...it is a city for wealthy yuppies. Living here on anything less than a good engineer's salary is becoming a tall order.
Which brings us to a very important point for all the young programmer dudes: when you all crowd into the same tiny city and bid up the rents into the stratosphere, your available dating pool shrinks to a puddle (yet another consequence of the skewed gender balance in tech. sigh.) All the pour-over coffee in the world doesn't make you happy when you can't get a date, and those artisan cocktails are far less cute when you're jockeying for position at the bar in a crowded room full of guys. If you're a 20-something male programmer looking for a date in SF, I feel badly for you. Hope you like BART, because you're going to Oakland (if you're lucky!)
Once upon a time it was only a mildly bad decision to locate your startup in San Francisco, but you could justify it with the appeal of a diverse, cosmopolitan city. Right now, there's a very real financial penalty (rents, salaries, taxes), and the cultural benefits are waning. There are a lot of great cities in the US, and on the internet, you can work from anywhere. Try those instead.
If you're 30+ things are less bad just because of the basic demographic realities of single life. But my friends from NYC still laugh at the dating scene here.
I doubt that there'll be that dramatic a change because there are too many actors, Detroit was more vulnerable because it depended on such a small number of anchor employers
San Francisco has appeal for weather, scenery, and an excellent harbor. Disadvantages include earthquake hazard, and an increasingly unreliable water supply. The latter isn't critical yet, but could well be.
The tech industry doesn't really have such requirements. People are comfortable with working remotely and using video conferencing; more importantly, the tech industry doesn't have regulatory requirements like the financial industry does that require people to conduct business from a physical office.
Whether SF is sustainable or not, well, I lean towards not, but in the long-term it looks pretty bad socioeconomically. Personally, I have no desire to live in the bay area and look for work elsewhere.
Signed: Former hedge fund employee and New Yorker.
I've heard varied reports on dating. Some friends are very successful, others no so much. This seems to be more a personal situation then dependent on the culture of the city as a whole. You just gotta get on that tinders or cupes or grindr if that's your thing and play the game just like any other city.
It's a fun city, but it's increasingly become a fantasy for rich white people.
Like parent says lots of "lifestyle" shops; I'm going to arrange a store so it looks like my home but everything is for sale. It's all bullshit though because the rent for these lifestyle shops must far outweigh what they're bringing in. It's hobby businesses for the wives of rich white C-level execs. I don't know I just made that last part up, but you get the picture.
So what you're saying is San Francisco is now highly optimized for homosexuals? (part of why I want to move there from Boston, to be honest)
note: im straight
If you are an employed (white?) guy who can't get a date in SF (not to be confused with Palo Alto), you need to get out more, or just get on okC. There's a whole lot more to the City than yuppie bars in SOMA or the Marina.
On the subject of "gay", something that I liked about the bay area was that gay is pretty common, and of course accepted and so it's just something that is, rather than someone's "defining attribute", so it's not this big deal. That's how things should be.
A single friend of mine in SF (who actually does quite well for himself) is fond of saying "any single man who moves to SF either is gay, has an asian fetish, or is crazy." It's crass and hyperbolic, but there's an germ of truth in there somewhere (FWIW, he's crazy).
More than that. Rents for apartments have doubled in the last year in Oakland, says my friend who owns a lot of diverse properties in the East Bay, so you know it's much worse in SF.
Panini is something I first experienced in France, where it's made with a special semi-raw bread. I've never seen anything quite like it in Italy, though.
Fancy, casual restaurants stopped selling sandwiches and "grilled-cheese", upgraded the bread, and started calling them Panini. The price was also increased by $5 dollars/per for a marginally better product.
Coffee has had a similar retail transformation.
they normally provide a better/closer shave, much much cheaper blades (compared to gillette), greater selection of blades/razors. there are probably more advantages.
but there are too many of these (how odd that sentence sounds).
Women don't live in SF?
Or are you just talking about women in tech? They're rare everywhere.
I don't know if that's true, but I think that's what the commenter was saying.
For startups, it's currently an ideal place IMO. There are quality people here doing whatever it takes to help people get a business started. Money? They can help. Space? They can help. Introductions? They can help. A low cost of living gives you plenty of time to figure things out. Throw in a ton of good restaurants, a decent art/music scene, a couple of good universities and you have something worth serious consideration. Biggest downsides are weather (winters are chilly) and you need a car.
Especially if you have a family. I rented a four bedroom house in a great neighborhood in Sacramento that was a bike ride from Midtown for $2900/mo. We ended up buying a bigger house in the same neighborhood for even less per month. No commute, food is cheap, etc. The cost savings are enormous, and I'm sure it's more expensive than St. Louis...
Yep:
http://www.bestplaces.net/cost-of-living/sacramento-ca/st.-l...
The trick outside the Bay Area, if you are consult-strapping, is keeping the contracts coming in. Probably better in areas like St. Louis than in Sac.
(And I have fiber coming into my house and can get 1 Gbps.)
I actually live in Scandinavia now, and the winters here are warm in comparison!
http://weatherspark.com/averages/31697/St-Louis-Missouri-Uni...
Humidity was always the killer for me. I remember flying from San Diego to St. Louis. It was 75 degrees and dry in San Diego, and 102 degrees with 94% humidity in St. Louis. I wanted to die, heh
That said, I always liked the variety.
It means that I have pretty strong, nostalgic feelings associated with the seasons changing.
I totally agree humidity is horrible. I've stayed a few summers in The Hamptons, Long Island---and humidity was a killer. I cannot imagine coping with 102 F / 94%.
I cycled twenty or thirty miles a day pretty consistently and it never ceased to amaze me how quickly my shirt would become a sopping wet rag the second I stopped
One of my main considerations when moving somewhere is the climate.
It would be cool if the site had links to places with similar climates (could be calculated with some kind of distance metric from all the variables). I loved the climate in Sydney, so it would be nice to see a list of places in the world where it's similar.
And yeah, I've never looked around for one, but being able to search for cities within similar bounds would be nice. Makes me wonder if there are national weather databases you could use to perform your own queries and get similar results.
http://mikemcbrearty.com/climate/
One feature I would like would be the ability to filter results by continent (or even more fine grained filters).
Basically, much of the midwest has shorter winters but some parts of it have equally harsh or even harsher (the Dakotas, for example) weather. Northern Michigan is quite a bit like Finland, for example, while the lower portion of Michigan is nothing at all like Finland.
Totally depends on where you go, even within the midwest.
Granted, in an average week Chicago won't be quite that cold, but in general its winter weather is pretty harsh. People bike to work all winter in Copenhagen, which would be unthinkable in Chicago weather (even if the city had better bike infrastructure). I actually like it being moderately cold and snowy, but -5 C is about my limit.
Humidity sucks though, heh.
I actually really miss St. Louis
So I'm doubtful that it would be easier to keep the contracts coming in while in St. Louis.
We have a fairly good startup scene (though obviously nothing on SF) and a large number of more traditional corporate employers of programmers like Express Scripts, Monsanto, Wells Fargo, Scottrade, Ameren, Charter, Anheuser Busch, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman. There is also an exceptionally active biotechnology scene here.
13% cheaper housing here according to the same site.
I'm renting a 4/3 2500 sq ft house on an 8k sq ft lot 3 blocks away from an 8/10 greatschools.org K-8 (I have 3 kids.) for $1600/mo.
I telecommute to my Bay Area job.
In a typical midwestern city, anyone who can afford it commutes to the central business district by car. They live, shop, and eat in the suburbs. They use their cars for all of these activities.
The C.B.D. ends up deserted at night when the office workers leave. Any successful night-time businesses have parking, in order to attract suburban customers. There is little reason for anyone to be on foot.
The reddit thread mentions very specific districts where you find pedestrians. I imagine those areas have excellent central parking, and deliberately-created "walkable" areas for browsing. A great development pattern to bring life back to deserted downtowns.
And, as I was walking about at rush hour, I expected to see a lot of car traffic, but the streets were practically empty of autos. The nearby freeway across the river was quite busy, however. I think the reddit thread had good things to say about the former decline of the city center.
I was one of the people who mentioned some of those places in that thread. There are such places in St. Louis, but Strange Loop (which I also attended) is not held near any of them. Most of the stretch talked about in that thread, from 9th and Market up to Union Station, is kind of a pedestrian wasteland (for lots of reasons related to density, failed urban renewal projects, and so on). Nobody in St. Louis goes to Union Station anymore; it's a complete failure of a project. But, likewise, nobody here would use it as any sort of example in a conversation about foot traffic in the city.
Everything in the UK is so grotesquely skewed towards London when it comes to modern tech. Some other cities aren't entirely horrible (Manchester, say) and some have a technically progressive air going for them (Brighton) but it sounds like even St Louis as a relatively small US city has more going for it in one place than most top tier British cities that aren't London (say Leeds, Nottingham, or Birmingham).
> As of the 2010 census, the population was 319,294, and a 2012 estimate put the population at 318,172,[6] making it the 58th-largest U.S. city in 2012. The metropolitan St. Louis area, known as Greater St. Louis (CSA), is the 19th-largest metropolitan area in the United States with a population of 2,900,605.
St. Louis City is entirely independent from the surrounding St. Louis County and covers an exceptionally small area by the standards of most big cities (~66 sq/mi). Some similar cities have addressed this by merging with their surrounding county (Indianapolis, for example, which is about 368 sq/mi), but even those that haven't (e.g. Kansas City) still cover a much larger portion of their region (316 sq/mi for KC).
It's very easy to exit the city-proper in St. Louis and not feel at all as though you've left the core of the city. The inner-ring suburbs are quite urban and, while the distinction between them and the City itself is the source of much local posturing, it's a misleading delineation if you're trying to figure out just how big St. Louis really is.
(As a side note, this way of dividing up the region also has a significant effect on the City's infamous crime statistics, for reasons that should be pretty obvious with a little bit of thought. That is to say, if you define almost any city as only its most inner core, then you're going to end up with much higher crime rates than if you include its suburbs. And if you're comparing one city that doesn't include its suburbs with cities that predominantly do, then, well, you get the idea.)
In other words, the larger MSA/CSA numbers more accurately reflect the relative size of both St. Louis's urban core and the surrounding region.
This applies to many cities in the Northeast as well. The cities are tiny compared to cities in other parts of the country.
That being said, there are parts that are rundown and sketchy. There are huge problems with drugs like methamphetamine outside of the 'normal' urban drug issues that most cities have. In addition, from what I understand, the Missouri tax system is terrible (property tax on many large items you own like cars in addition to your homestead tax and sales tax on top of income tax).
Luckily, if you're in the missouri section of saint louis, you'd have to stumble pretty badly to accidentally cross the Mississippi and end up there.
I'm not saying that east st. louis is terrible as an indictment of st. louis. I love stl. I can't wait to move back. I've just met a lot of random folks who don't realize that east st. louis is different, and stop by.
Luckily, if you stay on the west side of the river, you're pretty much fine. I lived in the city near the botanical gardens for awhile and it was great.
There are sketchy places in St. Louis itself, but they're not as bad as east st. louis, and that's like just about any other city I've been.
The city is super segregated. When you cross Delmar, the population shifts from very wealthy and white to poor and black.
Right now it is 10:00 in SF and 53 degrees.
I think weather plays a large part in why people like to live in the Bay Area. Many refer to the high cost of living here as the "sun tax." As I sit in my office wearing shorts and a t-shirt, I can't even fathom living in St. Louis.
During the summer it is not uncommon to have over 100 days of 100F+.
You do not want to be outside during that heat.
Oh, plus we've had a drought for years and years that has dried up most of our lakes to a shadow of their former sizes.
But your comparison is between Bakersfield, a medium-sized city whose largest employer is Kern County, and Houston, the world capital of energy and a major player in shipping, healthcare and aerospace.
Which city is more likely to actually pan out a $55k job for our hypothetical middle-class family? Houston (median income, $58k) or Bakersfield ($38k)? Where is that barely higher tax burden buying better schools? (I'll take any of Houston's suburbs on that count)
I grew up all over California but I've lived in Texas for the last nine years, I've seen the difference. Texas certainly isn't perfect but our cities are actually affordable.
If you want a house in or that has access to the trendy area of Seattle, be prepared to cough up anywhere from $300,000 to $600,000 (median is $619k but I assume some folks will buy a smaller house or one that needs a bunch of work to get the price down).
Texas has bad schools, high Crome, dumpster divers everywhere. Washington state is a first world country in comparison. Even some boondocks place like Spokane where houses still go for $150k compares well to Texas (though the tech jobs are all in Seattle).
The Texas school, conversely, was a palace of education. Better in every way. Highly-paid teachers, actual funding for extracurriculars, buildings that weren't condemned. Four years of computer science classes.
Are there bad schools in Texas? Absolutely. But the fact is (unfair as it may be) that in the areas a software developer is likely to live, the schools are fantastic.
You're 100% right that you can find cheaper housing in Auburn, Federal Way (mind the gunshots), Everett, or even Spokane. The problem is that living in none of those places gets you the walkable, diverse lifestyle of being in Seattle.
Also, thanks for painting all Texas schools with such a broad brush. I graduated from a north Texas (public, non-charter) high school that is well-ranked, in addition to graduating from a state college for my CSCI degree. My siblings came after me through the same school, one as recently as 5 years ago, and none of us are drooling founts of stupidity who can barely sign our own names. It's almost as though different areas have different levels of achievement in their schools.
My experience of Texas was all in Austin, maybe that is a lower end city compared to Dallas? Not sure, but I was amazed by the poverty versus the worst places I know of in Washington state (where I'm native).
http://www.seattlecondohunt.com/listing/577299-1711-e-olive-...
$554/mo in HOA and they're currently running a $210/mo "special assessment" for some recent upgrades. Almost everything on Capitol Hill is in the same boat. A condo in Issaquah had $325/mo for the HOA and another $300/mo to put in a new pool. I'm not sure why condos in Puget Sound love their special assessments but they sure do.
HOAs in north Texas that aren't considered "luxury" wouldn't dream of asking for more than a few hundred bucks a year. $254k gets you a newly-renovated 4bed/2bath half a block from the Capitol Hill-like Bishop Arts district in Dallas, a straight shot into downtown, transit, and no HOA: http://www.redfin.com/TX/Dallas/720-Elsbeth-St-75208/home/30...
We're the inverse: I'm a native of Texas and moved to Washington State. Seattle is awesome but it's very, very expensive compared to where I came from. Seattle has a lot to offer that Dallas doesn't, like weather that isn't incredibly unbearable and politicians that aren't incredibly unthinking, and scenery that isn't incredibly uninteresting. Trying to compare the two on price? Not in the same ballpark.
(The worst place I know of in King County is Federal Way and Austin was worse than that? Damn, the place has gone downhill a LOT since I was there.)
I'm not saying it's not a factor, but I think there are more important ones.
I maybe an exception to the stereotypical software engineer, but I work best around motivated people rather than people who are laid back all the time.
There is certainly nothing wrong with working at a time of day which is most productive for you, but the implication was that midwesterners were generally unwilling to put in a bunch of extra hours to "get it done." Not that they frowned upon people who liked to work at night.
I would argue, pretty strongly, that the culture of "kill yourself working a billion hours a week for your startup" is unhealthy physically, socially and mentally. Sure there is an outside chance that you hit it big and get fabulously wealthy. In the mean-time you pass up tons of actual real-life salary, benefits and vacation time that are tangible, usable, and increase your quality of life today. (Not to mention an actual retirement account, which most startups seems to neglect.)
As for the other statements, come to a hackathon or a Startup Weekend and see how motivated we really are.
Out of politeness I'll leave you beer, etc. comments alone.
When it gets to -24F out, aka you can get frostbite underneath clothes, you tend to say well lets just sit inside and do stuff or read/etc...
Cold isn't bad, cold+wind, that is the killer. I met a woman from socal that moved here recently. It was about 20F out and all I had on was a sweater. She looked like she was going to go for a recreation of Shackletons expedition. Granted I might be a bit crazy but cold really isn't that big of a deal. Look at the Buddhist monks that dry off wet towels on their shoulders in subzero weather.
But, if it keeps out the riffraff eh, I'll keep it.
1) for the love of what you hold holy do not go too fast on icy roads (that means you SUV driver). One unlucky moment like sliding a foot or two in front of a semi will be it. Don't leave that as an Xmas present.
We are going back this summer (I live in New England but go home to Southern Illinois every summer for a visit).
America has a lot of great cities. They all don't have the technical talent level that San Francisco has, but good culture is not monopolized in San Francisco.
St. Louis (and much of the midwest/south) also has a very high obesity rate compared to SF.
I would visit Memphis as a kid living in Mississippi. I could at least say that Memphis was better than anywhere in Mississippi :)
There is a very active Meetup group for entrepreneurs here - StartLouis. Please check us out!
If that sort of thing doesn't bother you, then you'd probably be better off just moving your startup to Oakland and maintaining a connection to the Bay Area startup network. Or, if it does, move to a more modern, safer city in the South that still has a low cost of living without many of the economic problems of the rust belt cities (and better weather to boot!).
[1] http://www.nbcnews.com/business/most-dangerous-cities-americ...
If you're worried about the violent crime rate, don't move to the south. Texas, Florida, and Louisiana are always near the top for violent crime rate. The states with the lowest murder rates are in the north, generally. You want to move someplace like Vermont or Oregon.
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/c...
St. Louis is currently listed as 3rd highest violent crime rate in the country (Detroit is #1, but in years past St. Louis edged out Detroit for murder rate). I'm not saying don't move there, but just be aware that north St. Louis is a pretty bad area and the economy doesn't seem to have improved much, despite the massive investments into the central urban attractions like the Arch, Union Station, and the things listed in the OP.
Perhaps the main problem with St. Louis is the division between the actual city of St. Louis and the various suburban towns that surround it. In 1970, the city boasted a population of nearly one million, and just 3-4 years later it was down to about half that. City residents blame the population implosion on school busing which led to white flight. The burbs like Clayton, Webster Groves, etc., in St. Louis County ("the County" as people call it) had their own tax base and when affluent people flocked there, the city lost a substantial portion of its tax revenue.
Overall, I really liked St. Louis but the crime rates are pretty bad. The weather in the summer is also bad -- very hot and humid. You will need AC, and it doesn't come by default with every dwelling. If it were me, I'd be looking at Phoenix or Tucson, because of their proximity to southern California and of course the weather, but then I spent some time in Arizona and fell in love with the place. Cost of living is probably comparable if not cheaper than St. Louis as well. Can't speak for the start-up community in Phoenix, however; there's not much of one that I heard of, as of 2010 or so.
St. Louis has taken its share of knocks over the years like many Midwestern cities, but those crime statistics are not indicative of the normal experience here.
http://gothamist.com/2010/05/03/patti_smith_suggests_finding...
"New York has closed itself off to the young and the struggling. But there are other cities. Detroit. Poughkeepsie. New York City has been taken away from you. So my advice is: Find a new city."
Good luck with your startup!
actually, i already did that, years ago.
SF is a pain in the ass to live in, even if you have lots of money.
it's not perfect but it's good for me. i have an amazing view from both home and the office, i can walk OR drive OR cab to get food/coffee/clothes/entertainment, and have access to the rest of LA if i choose to leave the sm/westside bubble.
Recently, I went back to visit for the first time in over 10 years. I was amazed that there was a night life, and families would go out to eat in the city! It seems to be turning it self around well, but I am sure there are more hurdles to make it even safer.
In addition to it being easier to get funding [1], it sounds like St. Louis is really looking to be a good spot for a startup in the US.
It's inversely proportional to your personal rent? Your company has no revenue, no employees, no office, no servers, no contractors, no contracts, no other costs in general? Is that really a company?
I don't think you're moving a business, I think you're just moving.
I have a tech business in St. Louis. I love living in St. Louis and will never live anywhere else.
A few comments:
It is extremely hard to hire\find good programmers. I've posted job ads on Dice and Craigslist, and received 2 or 3 replies. I don't think I received ONE reply from Dice. The replies you get are people that can't answer the most basic questions.
You will HAVE to use a recruiting firm that will try to poach the talent and you have to search out resumes. It will cost at least $50k for a programmer that can't even answer the most basic questions in an interview. Fortunately, I got very lucky and found one of the most kick-ass people on the planet.
In regards to East. St Louis, as other people mentioned, it is NOT in Missouri, it's in ILLINOIS. The only reason people in St Louis go to East St Louis is because the bars stop serving at 1:30 or 2AM. If you want to drink past that, everyone goes to East St. Louis. Either that, or to go to strip clubs. Given that, if it's a Friday or Saturday night, you'll see a bunch of other St Louisians over in East St Louis at Pops, or the Oz, or at strip clubs. It is definitely a bad area though. I've been to East St Louis many times and have never felt threatened.
The bad part of St Louis is North County. Unless you live there, the only reason to go there is for drugs. I've never been there, and as far as I know, you can't drink past 2AM there, and they don't have any strip clubs. I've driven by there many times, and I knew someone that worked in North County for years and never had any issues. It's like any other city, there are parts you don't want to venture through by yourself, late at night.
Unfortunately, I think most of the crime in both E St Louis, and North county, is local, black on black crime.
Downtown is somewhat desolate. If you want to live downtown, there are some cool areas like Soulard which is making a come back. Most people live in West County, South County, St Charles county, etc. I would never live downtown. Most of the action is outside of downtown. There are good sized office buildings in Clayton, West County, etc.
In the county areas, there are cops all over the place(which is a good thing). I've lived in a lot of places, and the bottom line is it's one of the safest places I've lived.
I read HN all the time, but don't know much about this start-up. Welcome to St. Louis though! As others mentioned, there are a lot of talented people here.
To take an example where I have better data, people have commented on the vibrant and growing startup scene in Santiago, Chile. Maybe it is vibrant and growing, but the total number of people professionally employed in software development (devs, testers, manager, product managers, etc.) is only about 2000.
Split that 2000 into 50 different companies (and 50 tech companies would often be held up as proof of viability for the location), eliminate the high percentage with the wrong skill set for your company, and how likely is it, really, that you could build an engineering team of 20 and sustain that in the face of attrition over time?
St. Louis isn't going to have more than a few thousand of the same sort of people. Most of them are also not products of local universities with strong engineering programs relevant to most of the kinds of software behind most tech startups these days. The supply therefore is not growing at a steady rate or being replenished.
75 startups in one location? What happens, when the half that make it past the founder stage need to hire 3-4 people? Not only are there only a few available devs of any skill level available for each, but they all have dozens of options on the same block.
For startups, a higher percentage of engineers in an area employed by companies of 50-people or less actually makes hiring harder. In such a situation, they all have options of more or less equal value, and you have little to distinguish yourself from the others. The fact that SV has Google, Yahoo, Mcsft, etc. alongside a ton of mid-sized and smaller companies makes it easier.
If you've ever tried to recruit for a startup, think about how often you bring up ownership, autonomy, "startup culture," etc. as selling points? How well does that work in an environment, when nearly everyone already has that where they are?
This is just a quick set of reflections, but the overall point I hope is made. The truth is that staffing your startup is one of the most brutal forms of competition your business will experience. You're one of many, many players competing for an extremely scarce resource that very few founders even know how to identify, qualify, or retain, once they've got them.
If you ever plan on building your company beyond a small team of friends and local referrals, you should be doing everything you can to stack the deck in your favor. The Bering Sea may be an expensive and crowded area for gold prospecting, but you're still more likely to find gold there than in Lake Michigan.
If a startup has a cool mission, a cool tech stack, -and- operates in an area with a low cost of living, low congestion, and plenty of culture, art, and restaurant variety/quality, it can compete quite nicely with yet another Silicon Valley company when it comes to attracting talent.
Relocation can work well for more established companies (and even then, two body problems often kill that), but it doesn't make sense at all for a semi-risky startup.
EDIT: A bit more seriously, and to your argument in particular, that's where low cost of living comes in your favor. "Hmm, I could take $90k in Silicon Valley where I will have to be careful with my budget, or I could take $75k in St. Louis, where I will live comfortably"; why in the world would you accept a startup in the Valley (thus moving there) given that decision, all other factors being equal (they're not, but there are plenty in favor of St. Louis, as this article points out)?
You're showing yourself willing to move (a software dev willing to relocate will not be short of a job for long; heck, you could always later -look- to move to the Valley), and you'll be able to sock away funds for emergencies much more easily..
If you don't believe developers are basically exchangeable commodities, then it is easy to see that we need a very large pool of jobs + a decent support network to find those jobs.
SF having critical mass of startups and people you already know (they moved from where you were before) makes it very appealing. SLT has none of that.
Worst case, the employee really needed the cash and used it for something else, but nobody could say that the startup didn't try to soften potential hard landings.
St. Louis has two strong universities: Washington University[1], ranked 14th in the nation, and St. Louis University, ranked 101st [2]. Washington University has the 7th ranked SAT score average, ahead of Stanford, Columbia, Duke, et. al. [3]
While a huge chunk of these kids move away from St. Louis (including myself), the challenge of getting talent to St. Louis isn't as hard when you have a strong U. in the area as a default. There are also great champions of the St. Louis scene, like Jim McKelvey, cofounder of Square and Wash U alum.
[1] http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/... [2] http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/... [3] http://www.businessinsider.com/complete-ranking-of-americas-... [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_McKelvey
One day I'll unlock that superpower.