Ask HN: Bootstrapped founder. Does it make sense to move out of SF for a while?
Currently in SF bay area solo bootstrapping.
I'm wondering if it makes sense for me to move to WA or NV for a while to continue working without thinking about the fact that I'm without an income and pay a lot to live here. I'm enjoying working on a B2B product driven business and taking care to address feedback as well as my own experience in this space to build something that I can be proud to put out there.
Anyone done this in the past? What was your experience? Pros/cons/pitfalls? Please do tell.
I'm fortunate that I have enough runway for 2-5 or more years without income, but ever since Covid I've always asked myself why I'm still here. I don't own a home here, and I have no roots here. The job market was strong here, but I don't plan to work at a tech company again and just want to focus on my stuff. I'm not at all worried about that, and I'm confident I can get a job again if I really need to, so that's not a concern to me. Most of my friends have moved away, and honestly the vibe in SF is kind of meh these days unlike 2016-2020 days.
Finally, I don't think I need to fundraise because I'm not sure I have a business that needs venture funding. And if I do need to fundraise, I'd like to have enough traction so I can get a good deal.
Anyway, looking forward to hearing from you. Sometimes its nice to talk it out :)
Thanks!
Published in 2024, this chronicle by @babyent details the mechanics of building a profitable, self-funded business without venture backing.
The community focused on B2B customer acquisition channels, cold email vs SEO distribution, and balancing full-time employment with side-project development.
You may be able to take advantage of a relationship with an incubator/accelerator and still bootstrap. These are literally everywhere, and believe it or not, there are competent tech workers, advisors and investors all over the US if you do need support.
Major tech hubs are Boston, NYC, Washington DC, Seattle, SF, LA, San Diego, Dallas, Denver, Austin, Atlanta, Raleigh/Durham, Baltimore-Washington-NoVA, St. Louis, Cleveland-Columbus-Cincinatti, Philadelphia-NJ, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, and many more... it's a big freakin' high tech country!
Here is a list of 100 incubators/accelerators across the US:
1. Y Combinator (Mountain View, CA) 2. Techstars (Boulder, CO, and multiple locations) 3. 500 Startups (San Francisco, CA) 4. Plug and Play Tech Center (Sunnyvale, CA) 5. AngelPad (San Francisco, CA) 6. MassChallenge (Boston, MA, and multiple locations) 7. Dreamit Ventures (Philadelphia, PA, and multiple locations) 8. Alchemist Accelerator (San Francisco, CA) 9. The Brandery (Cincinnati, OH) 10. Gener8tor (Madison, WI, and multiple locations) 11. Capital Factory (Austin, TX) 12. Amplify.LA (Los Angeles, CA) 13. StartX (Palo Alto, CA) 14. Betaworks (New York, NY) 15. Tech Wildcatters (Dallas, TX) 16. 1776 (Washington, D.C.) 17. The Startup Collaborative (Omaha, NE) 18. Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator (New York, NY) 19. Lighthouse Labs (Richmond, VA) 20. Boomtown Accelerator (Boulder, CO) 21. New Venture Challenge (Chicago, IL) 22. The Yield Lab (St. Louis, MO) 23. Acceleprise (San Francisco, CA, and Washington, D.C.) 24. Jumpstart Foundry (Nashville, TN) 25. Venture Hive (Miami, FL) 26. The Startup Factory (Durham, NC) 27. Arch Grants (St. Louis, MO) 28. The ARK Challenge (Fayetteville, AR) 29. Surge Accelerator (Houston, TX) 30. Cyclotron Road (Berkeley, CA) 31. UpTech (Covington, KY) 32. The Iron Yard (Greenville, SC, and multiple locations) 33. gener8tor (Milwaukee, WI) 34. Rev1 Ventures (Columbus, OH) 35. The Harbor Entrepreneur Center (Charleston, SC) 36. QC FinTech (Charlotte, NC) 37. LaunchPad Huntsville (Huntsville, AL) 38. Health Wildcatters (Dallas, TX) 39. Sixers Innovation Lab (Camden, NJ) 40. FounderTrac (Memphis, TN) 41. Velocity Accelerator (Birmingham, AL) 42. FlashStarts (Cleveland, OH) 43. InNEVator (Reno, NV) 44. Iowa Startup Accelerator (Cedar Rapids, IA) 45. Straight Shot (Omaha, NE) 46. The Idea Village (New Orleans, LA) 47. VentureSpur (Oklahoma City, OK) 48. Boomtown Boulder (Boulder, CO) 49. The Refinery (Westport, CT) 50. AlphaLab (Pittsburgh, PA) 51. Betaspring (Providence, RI) 52. Blue Startups (Honolulu, HI) 53. BoomStartup (Salt Lake City, UT) 54. Capital Innovators (St. Louis, MO) 55. Catalyst Accelerator (Denver, CO) 56. Coinvent (San Francisco, CA) 57. EvoNexus (San Diego, CA) 58. Excelerate Labs (Chicago, IL) 59. Health Box (Chicago, IL) 60. High Alpha (Indianapolis, IN) 61. Homebrew (San Francisco, CA) 62. Ignite Accelerator (Washington, D.C.) 63. Launchpad LA (Los Angeles, CA) 64. Mucker Capital (Santa Monica, CA) 65. OCEAN Accelerator (Cincinnati, OH) 66. Quake Capital (New York, NY) 67. RGA Accelerator (New York, NY) 68. SOSV (Princeton, NJ, and multiple locations) 69. StartCo (Memphis, TN) 70. StartFast (Syracuse, NY) 71. Startup Bootcamp (Miami, FL) 72. Startup Junkie (Fayetteville, AR) 73. Startup Socials (San Francisco, CA) 74. Starta Accelerator (New York, NY) 75. TechNexus (Chicago, IL) 76. The Accelerator (Raleigh-Durham, NC) 77. The Farm Accelerator (Atlanta, GA) 78. The Hatchery (New York, NY) 79. The Startup Factory (Durham, NC) 80. TinySeed (San Diego, CA) 81. Year One Labs (New York, NY) 82. Zero to 510 (Memphis, TN) 83. Accelerprise (San Francisco, CA) 84. Dreamit Health (Philadelphia, PA) 85. Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator (New York, NY) 86. FinTech Innovation Lab (New York, NY) 87. Food-X (New York, NY) 88. Founder Institute (Palo Alto, CA, and multiple locations) 89. Founder.org (San Francisco, CA) 90. Fourthwave (Los Angeles, CA) 91. HAX (San Francisco, CA, and Shenzhen, China) 92. Indie Bio (San Francisco, CA) 93. MergeLane (Boulder, CO) 94. MetaProp (New York, NY) 95. NextGen Venture Partners (Washington, D.C.) 96. Plug and Play (Sunnyvale, CA, and multiple locations) 97. PNP2 (Portland, OR) 98. PowerMoves (New Orleans, LA) 99. Reach (Austin, TX) 100. XRC Labs (New York, NY)
Most major research universities have some type of entrepreneurship program and at least one associated incubator/accelerator.
I am bootstrapped founder who built a B2B product that lives in the bay area.
I think your intuition is spot on, that living in SF is probably not the best way to save $$. That said, a few thoughts.
1) I'd recommend going somewhere where you can get coffee with your customers, so if you are picking a new location, being able to in person meet up with folks who are using your product and love it ... especially in the early days ... can make a difference between giving up on your dream and keeping going.
2) You can live cheaply in the bay area, but it's kinda of crazy. We did it with about ~30-50K - ignoring opportunity cost - 4 cofounders, no car, and more or less shopping at CostCo until we made enough $$ to pay ourselves anything. Rents have gone up, but I think it's likely still possible to get something off the ground while keeping cost of living low -- probably not living in SF though -- perhaps a suburb, or San Jose.
3) If you do plan on selling to startups, I doubt there are too many places where you'd be able to do as much door-to-door sales as you could in SF.
In short, I'd recommend picking location based on your target customers as #1 priority if your goal is to build a successful business.
If your #1 goal is to not work in tech again, and focus on your own stuff -- there are a lot of other places to live that are far cheaper, think -- a small college town somewhere rural -- you might have a 10-20 year runway if you have 2-5 in the bay area.
100% I would move out of the bay area if I had the means and I was bootstrapping.
I grew up in the East Bay, but I bootstrapped my companies in New Haven, CT and Fresno, CA, both much cheaper to live than the Bay Area.
It happened that my wife was getting her PhD, which is why we moved to those cities, but I commented often that I was grateful that we lived in such low cost of living cities while I was trying to conserve cash and get my companies off the ground.
I run MicroConf, and each year we run a survey and a report called The State of Independent SaaS, where we survey 600 or 700 bootstrapped or mostly bootstrapped SaaS founders. One of the questions we ask is about location.
And unlike venture backed companies, which cluster in a handful of cities, Independent/Bootstrapped SaaS founders are located in more than 340 cities around the world, with the most populated city (London) having only 4% of the population.
You can bootstrap from pretty much anywhere. Personally, in your shoes, I would pick a place with great quality of life and great culture, plus low cost of living. Cities like Minneapolis, Charlotte, Raleigh & Durham, Boulder, etc.
Good luck, you have plenty of runway and I wish you the best on this journey.
I'll admit I'm asking myself a similar question, about my different US HCOLA city. (And I hope comments don't make me regret candor.)
One reason to stay is familiarity, and knowing that I can at least scrape by here a while longer, including living car-free (but not compete economically with the FAANG outpost workers, for safe and comfortable housing).
Another reason to stay is that -- should scraping-by not work out, or the economy suddenly gets much worse, such as due to geopolitical instability -- the city government has a lot of money and tax base, and I'm guessing currently a better social safety net than much of the US.
Another reason to stay is that my startup might have to pivot, due to how consumers are using LLMs, with nothing obvious (and ethical) to pivot to. But my skillset is sometimes highly valued by highly-paying companies, as well as early startups, and the right carrot to abandon my startup would erase the biggest downsides of staying in my city.
100% yes -- I say this having moved to only a slightly lower CoL place, another wealthy suburban area in California. But I was still able to trade an SF 1-bedroom bachelor pad for a 4 bedroom house (not fancy brand new construction or anything though) with enough left over to buy a new midsize car with cash. This was 6 years ago.
But anyway your calculus is different not owning a home, but just as favorable. I'd check out the Las Vegas or Phoenix metros, where you could live so much more cheaply. Rural can also be an amazing deal, but you'll have to consider your willingness to possible have a different way of life, as well as availability of good broadband, which shouldn't be underemphasized. Overally you'll save a tremendous amount of money which means more runway for you, or hopefully just doesn't get burned as runway and goes into a house down payment or something a few years from now when mortgage rates may be low.
Best of luck!