Why Santa Cruz vs Silicon Valley vs San Francisco?

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The days of investors who strong-arm startups to relocate to the Silicon Valley are long gone.  With the rise of powerful CMS platforms and RAD (Rapid Application Development) tools (e.g., micro services, containers, Big Query, CI/CD, Serverless, AWS Fargate, ES6, Typescript, Kotlin, etc), entrepreneurs can prototype and test ideas in days or weeks, not months or years...and from anywhere in the world. In his recently published book That Will Never Work, Marc Randolph describes how over the past year his son was able to conceive of an idea, grab a domain name, launch a website, and start selling products, all while commuting from SF to Santa Cruz. Cost: ~$100.  In contrast, it took Netflix over 9 months and $1M to launch.

Over the next 6 weeks, we will produce a series of articles comparing the cost of starting and running a startup in Santa Cruz versus in Silicon Valley, or San Francisco. And we will also compare the work-life balance perks in our different regions. Our analysis will include talent pool, wages, office space, job growth, population growth, affordable housing, access to transportation, PTO, funding, commute time, homelessness, and much more. And we would like your suggestions on what data is important to you in making a startup successful. Send your ideas and recommendations to info@santacruzworks.org.

Part 1: Lifestyle + Business Sense

Part 2: Room to Grow: Office Space and Wages

Part 3: Housing and Homelessness

Part 4: A Unique Tech Ecosystem

Part 5: Where Do We Go from Here