alt Hacker News> You need waaaaay more that 2-3 million; most of that is funneled directly in to SF landords pockets
Which is why you should build your team in Denver, Minneapolis, Chicago, Detroit, etc. There's a competitive advantage to hiring outside the SF tech bubble today. Over the last 5 years the network effects in SF have begun to evaporate.
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We (darklang) are fully remote! One person in Vermont, one in Algeria. :)
This is a pretty weird take. Talent in Denver, Minneapolis, Chicago etc. is not a whole lot cheaper than in the Bay Area. Employees are getting a large (majority) of their comp as options or RSUs, so that makes the delta even smaller, you're just talking base salary.
If that's "make or break" for you, then something is wrong. There are plenty of reasons to want to have a distributed workforce (larger talent pool in general, passionate employees) but saving money is the least important one here.
Agreed in hindsight, but at the same time there was no place else where a couple of 20-somethings could grab a cup of coffee with a VC and walk away with a handshake deal for $2 million dollars. That just didn't happen in Denver et al in 2014.