Welcome back to the episode of the Startup Therapy Podcast. This is Ryan Rutan, joined as always by Will Schroeder, my friend, the founder, and CEO of startups.com. Will, we've podcasts about this before. In the past and, and historically, you know, the, the mantra in, in startups was very much like that of real estate, which was location, location, location. Right?
It used to, yeah, used to seem to matter a lot, particularly if you wanted to get funded and what was it now, almost 10 years ago, you packed up the family and moved across country. In order to be at the epicenter of the startup world in in California and. How'd that work out and like, what would you do differently this time? Would you still do it now, like 10 years later? You know what's awesome? I wouldn't have to, I, yeah.
You know, I was, I was having a conversation with, uh, with the founder last week and she was talking about she wanted to move to California, San Francisco specifically, you know, she said, Hey, you know, that's where the capitalist. And uh, and I said, well, you know, I've done that myself. I've, I, I moved my family specifically out to San Francisco, uh, to be closer to everything, you know, et cetera. This is.
But as I was explaining it to her, I was starting to think, you know, some of this stuff actually doesn't apply as much. 'cause yeah, when I moved out there, I moved out to, lemme get my dates right. I moved out to, to, uh, Los Angeles, to Santa Monica in 2006. And then, uh, later on I'm make up my dates. 2009, I guess 2010 went to San Francisco and then, then back to la. Doesn't matter. Point is I, was there a long time. Yep. And it was. A very expensive move.
And I don't just mean financially, I mean just like lifestyle wise. You know, my, my family, all my friends, you, everybody else was in Columbus at the time. Yeah, yeah. And moving was, was a huge commitment. But at the time, all the things you needed were there specifically the talent, the money, the, you know, uh, the infrastructure. Everything else was there. And so you kind of had to make the pilgrimage. But as I'm explaining it to her, I keep saying to myself, well, you know.
That actually doesn't apply anymore. Wait, no. That actually doesn't apply anymore either. And after a while I was like. I don't think you really need to move. Yeah. It's, it's crazy. But I mean, think about all the things that have happened since then from a global pandemic that, that made the already, uh, fairly strong push towards remote work just become a thing for, for everybody.
The fact that we're all essentially now Zoom natives, like right, where, you know, we're, we're doing stuff like this on a, on a, a, you know, daily basis, multiple times a day. Where it no longer feels weird, we're more socially connected via the, the networks that we use online than we ever were before. Yep. And so the, I mean, even, even just in, since the time that you and I did this, another version of this podcast previously, things have changed again, like significantly unbelievable.
And so I thought it was worth revisiting because I, you know, incidentally wound up revisiting it without even realizing it. It was really interesting because I wasn't even trying to make the case for not moving. I was making the opposite case. Right? Yeah. So I was trying to state it. I just like kept correcting myself going, you know, well actually, yeah, yeah, yeah. But actually, so I think we look at three reasons. Three, three categories. Okay. That startups move.
They move for, because they wanna be where the talent is, right? Yep. Which, you know, was always valid. They move because if, if they're raising, because they wanna be where the investors are, and that's pretty specific. And then the third is they wanna network, they, they wanna be around other people and, you know, grow their networks in the zeitgeist.
Yeah. Yeah. And it's just, what was really interesting is as I looked at those three, like seminal reasons, you pack your shit and go, I was like, damn, there's no way I would do that now. And it was a great experience. So I'm not looking at it like, oh my God, it was terrible. It's amazing. I, you know, I got, I raised money from investors. I hired tons of people. I, I built a huge network. Like, uh, I did all the things, but if I had to do it over again right now, probably wouldn't.
Yeah. I think there's a difference between being a good experience and it being a, a necessary thing. I think we talked to so many founders who are like, I have to go do this. I don't want to, but I have to. And I think that that's just, that's, that's something that we will. Probably end up dispelling in the next 30 to 45 minutes. Yeah. You know, and, and I, I posted this, uh, yeah. After I had that conversation, I posted this on Reddit.
Right. And I, Reddit always fascinates me because nobody's happy on Reddit. So if, if I wanna make sure everybody, like I can get a complaint from everybody, I post it on Reddit. Yeah. It's good place. And so I posted on Reddit and I, I think I was a little more specific. I said, is it still worth moving to San Francisco? And I wanted to make it specific to San Francisco so I didn't get everybody defending their, their city. Right. And, uh, mixed results.
You know, some people were still adamant like, if you're gonna build a big company, it has to be in San Francisco. And other folks were, I saw some of that conversation though, and like at least one or two of the people were like, yes, you have to move to San Francisco. And then when you look at their location like. That's not where they were though. So like they're telling you you have to go do this, but they haven't done this. They're not doing this. Like, okay, come on. I love Reddit.
'cause it's a mixed bag. You know, it's just a different version of social media. And uh, I posted it there again because I knew people would have strong opinions. Right on. Like, if you're on Twitter, if you're on LinkedIn, you tend to follow people's opinions that you like. You know, if you're a Democrat, you follow Democrats, you're Republican, you follow Republicans. But on Reddit, they just tend to throw everybody in the same room and you kind of get everything.
So to your point, what was interesting about the conversation, it was a pretty lively one. There are still people that genuinely believe that, like, again, this is San Francisco, but I'm using that as a proxy that believe if, if you're gonna build a meaningful company, it's still in San Francisco. And there's data to support that. I, I, I, I think it's a little bit, I dunno how causal it is. It's, you know, the biggest companies are in San Francisco. Oh, maybe.
Maybe the, the best entrepreneurs end up moving there and build them there. It doesn't mean that they couldn't have built them elsewhere. It just means they didn't. I think it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy at some point. If everybody thinks they have to go there to build, so that everyone goes there to build, then by nature of everyone building there, that's where it's gonna happen. Right? Yeah. It's kind of hard to avoid.
The second part that nobody talks about is yes, that's also where people go to fail. Yeah. Like far more of them fail in San Francisco than anywhere else also. Yeah. And so, uh, look, this isn't a everyone versus San Francisco thing. I just thought that was an interesting, you know, single data point. But what was interesting is I feel like if I had posted that four or five years ago, the number of folks that said, you've gotta be in sf. Would be much stronger.
I mean, again, I moved there, so I, I, I clearly like, you know, believed in that thesis. I just don't believe in it the way I used to. Not knocking sf it's a great city. I'm just saying the world has changed. So let's talk about it. Sure. Let's talk about first I wanna get to investors second, if you don't mind. I, because that's fine. Not everybody's raising, but when people are like, hey, like you know, I need to move 'cause I need access to talent. Forget SF for a second.
Yeah. I need to move. 'cause access to talent. I think you opened it up. I think remote work. Put a bullet in that because we're not centralized anymore. It did. Yeah, so I think the, the idea that you need to be in a place, in fact it, it's at this point, like I think five or six years ago, we could have said like maybe we're pretty close to that line. Three or four years ago. I think we could have said like, yeah, it probably doesn't matter right now.
I think it actually matters, but in the opposite direction, which is to say that if you were to try to go somewhere and say you have to come into an office. Look at how that's going for a lot of companies right now. So it, it can actually work against you if you move somewhere specifically to gather humans. And that kind of doesn't matter where it is at this point, San Francisco or otherwise, you're gonna struggle. Right? Right. It's just not what people want.
It's no longer like, there was a point at which it was, it was sort of a benefit or, or a, a perk. Remember when we, when did we start doing this? Will? 2014? Yeah. 2012. Was it that far back work from home Wednesday? Yep. Oh, oh. Work from a Wednesday. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was 2014. 2014 work from home Wednesday. Right. Which then expanded to work from home Wednesday, Friday, which then expanded to Monday, Wednesday, Friday.
So by the time the pandemic hit, we were in the office two days and Yeah. Right. It had already gone. You know, you and I talk about this a lot, but yeah. The minute you make something a, a benefit or a perk for, for people, it very quickly becomes the baseline and the expectation. Now it's just an entitlement. And like that's everybody. Now everybody's in that same boat where it's like, I just remote is what? What do you mean in person? Well, I think it, it's a few things.
Number one, like Covid broke the seal, right? Yeah. A hundred percent. Covid basically said, look, the whole world literally can work remote. Like you can't make an argument that it can't be done. Now you can make an argument and, and plenty of my, my smart friends have that said, I just prefer to have everyone in the office. I get that. Like, I, I, yeah, the argument's valid. I'm not saying there isn't a version where having people in the office is. Bad. Right? I am.
I'm, I'm saying that, but it's a preference at this. It's a preference. You, you don't, I prefer to have people in the office. Yeah. Before it was table stakes. We had an office like everyone else. Yeah. Even though we were only going to it two days a week, days a week, still paid the same amount for the damn office, right? Yep. And because of that, there was an expectation that if our office was in Columbus, then our team was in Columbus. And now.
Like it doesn't even occur to me to hire someone in Columbus. Not being anti Columbus, I'm just saying No, it just doesn't matter. Right, right. You don't have to think parochial. That went away completely. Yeah. I'm not gonna see them either way. Right. Yeah. They're gonna be wherever they can be and it doesn't work for every company. I get all that. Sure. But, but every company usually, you know, founders making these decisions are usually sub 50 people, if not just the only person.
And if we're talking about the ability to attract talent, let's say for the first. 10 to 20 to 30 people. Okay, so we don't get into this like scaling thing. I have a hard time believing you can't build a 30 person distributed team anywhere. Yeah. I, I think it's, it's actually even easier. I think that some of the challenges with the distributed team come when you surpass that point. When you're at 50 Yeah.
To a hundred, 150. There's a point at which now making a consistent company culture becomes a little bit more difficult. Absolutely. But I would argue, yeah, at the, at the early stages, it's, it's far easier. You know what else is easier from a talent perspective, if you have the money, you're not spending on San Francisco rent to hire them. Right, right.
Turns out people like the cash, they, they weren't paid more than, like, it'd be cool to hang out in your, your San Francisco office and get paid half of what I could pay if you weren't paying that rent. Or just the other side of it is a lot of the people that were in San Francisco didn't wanna be there. And again, I'm not picking on San Francisco, take New York, take any, any big high price city for a very long time. You had to be in that city in order to to, to get those opportunities.
And Covid really just changed all of that. I mean, COVID was awful, but the one positive that came out of it is it made us say. Wait a minute. I wanna live in Columbus, Ohio, but basically do a New York City job. Now you can, no surprises there. But what I'm saying is a lot of the talent that before you couldn't get access to. Yeah. Because they had expected to stay kind of parochial to their city. A lot of those people went home. Right.
A lot of those people went back to where they came from, either to raise families or just to to live, you know, uh, without 14 roommates. And I think that goes for miles. You did it. We did. Yep. We, we've, we've moved quite a bit since the, uh, since the inception of the business. But, um, I think that point is, is extremely valid, which is that before there was sort of a, a, a fence around some of that talent. Yeah. And I think at this point that fence is absolutely gone.
And it was driven by the talent, right. Like they said like, Hey, we don't wanna be corralled here anymore than anybody else does. We saw it like, I saw it actually. So if you remember the, the condo that I owned in Columbus, I sold to a San Franciscan. Yeah, it wanted to come back to the Midwest after having been out there and, and built a startup for a couple of years. Sold my, uh, house in, in Florida after we left to somebody leaving, uh, the Bay Area.
It wasn't San Francisco, but the Bay Area, uh, that wanted to get outta there and, and, and buy something somewhere else, like we saw a massive amount of diaspora after it became possible, like the minute it became possible, people started moving around. It's, it's so funny because everyone plays the same Zillow game.
Yeah. Like we were living in San Francisco and we were, we were looking, we were, we were in an apartment at the time and we were looking for a, a home somewhere like in Palo Alto and, you know, the home price of bananas. And then you take what you were gonna spend and ather in, or where the hell you were gonna go, and then you plug it into any other city you could live in. Right? Yep. And it's, it's like you have mansion by comparison. And we did the same when we moved to Los Angeles.
You know, we ended up finding a home in Beverly Hills, which wasn't our first choice, but that's just kind where we landed. And then we started looking at, 'cause uh, you know, uh, will, my son was born, we had to find more room and we started looking at other homes. More expensive. Then we took that same price and we looked at you. Well, we get anywhere else. What would that do? Somewhere else? Yeah, anywhere else. Probably when you're there, you feel so poor, right?
No matter how well you've done, you feel so poor. Right? And it doesn't occur to you like, um, you forget after a while. Like what that money could buy anywhere else, or more importantly, you don't need that much money to live like, like what? That life doesn't cost that much. It only costs that much right here. And I think people figure that out quickly.
And so I think that that's, it's been nice for people to be able to decouple themselves from kind of like the life they want and, and the job they want and, and then not having to have those two things magically line up because they often don't, um, or they don't, as life circumstances change, right. Like when it was just, I. You and Sarah, you know, being, uh, you know, being in, in California was fantastic.
Like the minute you add two more humans, you need to add at least one more, if not two more bedrooms. Yep. All of a sudden it's like, okay, big difference. This is where we want to be based on what it would actually cost us to do this. And yeah, unfortunately, like when that used to be hard coded, hardwired to the type of work you wanted to do, you didn't really have much of a choice. So you, you had to then choose between life and work.
Yep. Which, look, you know, I, you and I both love what we do and so like life is kind of work for us, but also like. Work is supposed to serve life. Yeah. Right. And so at the minute when you have to start making trade-offs between the two, the calculus gets really ugly. Yeah, it does. And, and you know, the other side of it though, is again, moving to a city for talent, we happen to be entering into an era where a lot of us don't need as much talent, you know, with the advent of ai, et cetera.
So the idea of scaling up the way it used to mean I raise lots of money and hire lots of bodies, that that's how you build companies. Yep. And now it's like, is it. I mean, low code, does it have to be no code AI fractional hire on demand service, right? Yeah. Man, there's so many other ways to solve those problems.
Yeah. Yeah. And then, you know, I, I heard a quip that I've heard a million times on that Reddit and that subreddit, which was, look, if you wanna build a big company, you, you have to go to a big city. Right? Because, you know, all the big companies are in big cities. And it's like, look, I get that. But do you wanna build a big company? Yeah. I mean, like, if you look at it in today's terms, one, if you have a thousand people, what the fuck are they doing all day? Right, right.
Seriously. Like, I mean, this is a dumb example and it, it's probably works against me, but I thought it was hilarious. Like the, the, the, the event, not the outcome. When Elon Musk went into Twitter. And he fired 90% of the staff. Yeah. And that was years ago. And Twitter is still, is around. And again, I, I don't want anybody to lose their job. So this isn't like, it's not that. No. It's just like, hold on a sec. He did get rid of 90% of the staff. 90% of people.
Yeah. And the company's still around like. Nothing changed. Seriously. What were they doing all day? Part of it is predicated on the fact that like people have also set their, their sights on these really wild and crazy outcomes, which you and I have talked about. Like, like you don't have to sell a company for a billion dollars to have a really good lifestyle.
And as you reduce things like staff counts and costs, you also don't have to build nearly as big of a business to just cash flow really well and, and build a stable business and really enjoy the hell out of it. That's okay. Right. And if you do all this cost baked in, then you kind of have to build a big business to get to the point where you can extract as much money from it. But if you don't need to do those two things, then just don't. Right? Right.
Just build a good business that puts cash in your pocket, pay your teams well, and then subscribe to the AI services you need to get it all done. Well, so which, which brings us to the next category, which is investors. I wanna be clear, I have not seen the same stratification or diversification of investors by location that I've seen by talent, et cetera. Okay. Yeah. Now let me unpack that a little bit.
Part of it is since the start of Covid, like 2021 was a boom year, you know, one of the greatest like venture years of all time IPOs and everything else like that, and it went nuclear winter after that. Yep. So part of the reason I'm not seeing like a mass proliferation of investors, uh, investing everywhere in every location because they're not investing in any location anywhere. Yeah. They're not investing at all. Right. It's, it's been incredibly dry. So I, I haven't seen that behavior.
However, what I'm really fascinated by, and, and Ryan, we did an episode on this, uh, not, not, not too long ago, is how much capital startups need in this new era. Right with, with, with everything dramatically changing, particularly talent, that's always the biggest line item is, is the staffing line. You know, something that's really funny about everything we talk about here is that none of it is new.
Everything you're dealing with right now has been done a thousand times before you, which means the answer already exists. You may just not know it. But that's okay. That's kind of what we're here to do. We talk about this stuff on the show, but we actually solve these problems all [email protected]. So if any of this sounds familiar, stop guessing about what to do, let us just give you the answers to the test and be done with it.
We, I had a, an interesting discussion a couple weeks ago, uh, that, that mirrored this, which was. The idea that people were, there were a group of people complaining about the fact that, you know, investors are only now writing checks for profitable companies with traction and customers and all this stuff. And I'm like, yeah, they wanna invest their money where they think you're gonna get it back. Yeah. Weird. Huh?
That didn't, to be fair, investors have always wanted to invest in profitable companies. That's it, right? Like it's a limited number. Yeah. Yeah. My not full counter, but sort of the yes and or yes, but the fact that you can actually get to those points with a lot less capital now, right? Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't take nearly as much money. Right. It used to take, if you had to go build an entire web platform, right, and there's gonna be, let's just say conservatively $250,000 to build that.
Yeah. You can now build something that would be commensurate to what you could build for two 50, for 25 to 50 now. Yeah. So we magnitudes difference in the cost it takes to get to that point. So that's part of why investors can say, we can do that. And they're not actually hamstringing the, the start of environment. Like it might sound like they are.
Yeah. And, and the other side of it is, you know, investors did do those, those huge checks, the billion dollars in 500 engineers kind of move and it didn't really back out very often. Correct. So, so they kind of got burned too. Yeah. But again, sometimes when you test your thesis and it doesn't work, you gotta make a new one. Yeah. Look, if in today's terms you still need 500 engineers and I'm using engineers just to be sure. Right. Then I, I'm, I'm really gonna question your efficiency.
I'm gonna question, what the hell are you building with all those people that you couldn't be doing with? That's clearly a sports league that only has players who are engineers. Right? Right. Can't imagine what else would take 500 engineers at this point. A tiny fraction of our listening audiences is out there looking for tons of engineers. So I wanna be clear, like, you know, we got plenty of folks who are doing CPG, who are doing services business, who are doing like whatever.
So. You know, they hear us say things like that and like do that, like that doesn't even remotely apply to me. And what I'm saying is I get it, but if, if you were packing your stuff and going, going to Big City, whether it was Boston, whether it was sf, whether it was New York, you know, whatever, in search of capital, to be honest, you generally had to, and I don't know if that's changed dramatically. Okay. What has changed is how much capital you would need. Yeah. To make that trip worth it.
You know, like back when you needed $10 million to do anything meaningful and there was a time. You had to go to where there was $10 million and there was like three cities you could do it. Now I'm just saying, and you're saying the same thing, like the capital requirements just aren't nearly what they were, if any, in some cases. So the idea of having to, to, to drop everything and, and, you know, disconnect your life to get out to the most expensive cities just isn't what it used to be.
So I, I think. The need for investors has gone down. How much, how much they care about location. I don't know how much it's changed yet, to be honest. I don't know. I don't know. It'll be interesting to see. Let me ask you a hypothetical here. I just want to get, get a, uh, crystal ball moment here. I'm curious what you think over the last 10, 15 years we've watched, you know. Pre-seed rounds go from 25,000 to 2.5 million. Yeah, you're right. Right.
Just the funny rounds have gone outta control. As we start to see less capital required to to launch and build and grow, do you think that we'll start to see the round sizes come back down? Will there be a correction around that or will it just be more money funneled into less companies with the same size rounds? The venture guys have a strong incentive to put more capital to work. Because it ain't their money. That's how they make their money. Yeah, yeah, exactly right.
So, so they have a strong incentive for there to be 500 person engineering teams. Okay. So I wanna be clear, like from their standpoint, being more capital efficient doesn't entirely, you know, jive with them. And now again, these are super smart people. I'm not saying like they, they're trying to waste money. I'm just saying. Be clear when they need bigger funds and they can justify bigger funds that they get massive takes from, that works really well for them.
Sure. If you were to say, Hey, VCs from this point on, no startup will ever need more than five or $10 million, they'd all go outta business. So, so again, they still like the idea of being able to put, put money to work. Of course, they want startups to be efficient. They don't like the idea of burning money. Right? And, and look, staff was the big burn, right? Absolutely. Always has been.
'cause it cost a fortune to find all those people, you know, think recruiter fees, et cetera, bonuses, whatever. Then you were always pulling people from their last job to a new job, which meant you were paying the most they've ever made. Right? Yep. So you had to be wildly and somebody else was gonna do that to you and pull them to their job. Absolutely. Right. And you gotta pull somebody else. Yeah. It just becomes a cycle. Building on that.
So as more startups needed more talent, because that money was all, you know, getting, uh, foisted onto all these companies Yep. To hire more talent. Market rates were going up and demand was going up, fees were going crazy. Right. Like it kind of fed itself Right. You know, and inflation of talent and, and, and cost.
Now all of a sudden, particularly for things like engineering, where good engineers and smart people are always valuable, just a hundred percent, they can do more than, they could do more as a single unit more. Yep. So you just don't need as many of them. That's a big change. Dramatically changes the capital requirements to get to the same point within a startup company. You bet. You bet. There was also, again, all these things kind of have a ripple effect.
There was also a notion, let's say in 2021, in like the, the height of the go-go. That was our 1999 of, of recency. Yeah. There was a notion that in order to look like you needed more capital and to be valuable, you had to hire a lot of people. If I go out and I say, I, I need a $300 million round 'cause I need to hire so many people 'cause we're growing so fast. That was a strong signal. That's exactly what investors look for to say yes. A company with, with those ambitions and that momentum.
That's where I, I wanna park cash and, and there's all kinds of good reasons to believe that. Now, but since so many companies, VCs got burned by doing that. Yeah. And, and not just VCs, you know, it goes down the line to angel investors Sure. Et cetera. Where all it starts. Now there's a version where at least they're like, you know, that didn't work out so well. Yeah. Like, we kind of got crushed across the portfolio.
So how about we not do that again and kinda look, look at how, how can we be more efficient? How much do you think technology's played a role in this too? I mean, like, yeah, they may still prefer to invest somewhat parochial. Like I, I don't, I don't have a strong thesis around that, but certainly like everybody's comfort level. Like, well, you know, 2015 you packed your bags and you went and found investors in 2025, we hop on a Zoom and we do the pitch.
Right. In fact, I know a lot of people that just prefer that, right? I don't want somebody walks into your office with a really bad pitch, like you're stuck with them. Oh God. It's like an how many, how many, how many investor offices had to tolerate you and Elliot sitting in the, in the, in the waiting rooms, uh, eating pizza, waiting for your, your partner pitches, right? So like, at some point it's way more efficient for them too.
It is, and again, investment's been slow, so I don't think we're really gonna see what the appetite is for going outside your parochial bubble, so to speak. Yeah. Uh, until we see the, the next big, like, you know, kind of go-go moment of investing, but by the time that happens, let's say it's a few years off, you know, where things kind of really do cycle up by the time that happens again.
Again, with the advent of ai, of fractional, of remote, et cetera, you're just gonna have a very different climate for what people need than they did now, because before we were all raising money to hire people. Yes, there was. There were marketing budgets, but those scale with the growth of our product, it was hire this massive staff and hope it works out. Which, so let's go to the third category though, where I wanna go to a big city.
Because I, I want the networking opportunities and Ryan, I, I wanna split this. There's no question that going to a big city again, we're talking about location, that going to a big city is gonna open you up to more opportunities. You're about to move to a big city for exactly this reason, for your whole family, right? Exactly. Yeah. How do you justify it? Because it's, it's gonna cost way more where you're going than where you are now. Well, we did the, we did the calculus on it, right?
Like there are specific things that are missing in our current geography, right? From a family perspective, there's things, I don't think everybody knows where you are. Uh, so we're, we're currently in Antigua, Guatemala, right? And we're getting ready to head to Madrid, Spain, which are, uh, about, you know, polar opposites, right? We've got. 30,000 people here. There were 30,000 people in the, in the block that we stayed in over the summer, uh, in, in Madrid. Right, right.
So complete different access to things like culture and arts and, and organized sports and schools and just all kinds of other stuff. And then all the access to all of Europe. So in our case, this is very much a taking advantage of the fact that work is decoupled from life and that life can happen where it needs to happen in order to. Deliver what we, what we want.
So as we do the plus minus, yeah, there are lots of costs involved in the move, but according to the calculus, we performed the benefits. Far outweigh that. Right? You bet. And we're, we're, we're moving because we want to, not because we feel like we need to, so we're running towards something, not away from something or the, I mean, I guess we are still, we're running away from the lack of, of resources here. So for us, we're looking at this going, this is 2015.
In a lot of ways, like we cannot get, we can't replace some of the stuff that, that we can get digitally now that we want. Right. And so we're, we're in a position where it does make sense to, to pack up and go, you know, it's, it's interesting to me is that when I moved to, uh, to Los Angeles and to San Francisco, as you remember, I was.
Like Johnny Networker, like, like I, I was, you know, in, in five to seven meetings a day when I first moved to Los Angeles, to, um, Santa Monica, I hosted over a thousand people Yeah. At my place, right? Yeah. Uh, I mean, unbelievable numbers of people as far as networking and meeting people, right? So, clearly I was a very strong believer in the networking opportunities, and it was awesome. Now, a few things that, you know, that, that I, I wanna.
Put together, number one, if you go to a bigger city, and that's most of what we're talking about here. If you go to a bigger city, just like you said with Madrid, you are going to be exposed to more stuff. A hundred percent you're going to meet more people. I said like the folks in LA or the folks in San Francisco as an example, paid a fortune to live there.
Yeah. So by definition they were all like, nobody was complacent, like everybody was there because trying to take advantage of it, they worked their as off to be there for we had. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I like that vibe right now. Once you got past that though, like let's say you're living in New York, you live in San Francisco, you're also like, this is a really small apartment. I mean, LA is the same thing.
This is a really small apartment and my quality of life sucks depending on what you want your quality of life to be. Now, all that said, what it was really about is you didn't have a way to find or me. Any of these people, unless you went to those cities that just, you couldn't do it otherwise. Like the other version of people, like, oh, I'd meet people at conferences. I've been to a million conferences. I'm the most outgoing person I know.
I've never been to a conference that I thought was worthwhile. Like ever, ever in 30 years. Right? Yeah. It's always the biggest waste of time. It's always the the the, the thing, right? Like, oh, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna make, you know, everybody that I need to know is gonna be there. Cool. Are you actually gonna talk to them? Are you gonna make meaningful connection with them? Oh my god. Ships passing in the night. Right?
Yeah. I think that's, there's something else that's interesting there, and I think we can talk about like how much that's changed now and the other ways that it's changed. But like one of the things that that always struck me was, and then sure, there are lots of people there, but one of the things that ended up happening anytime I've been in a bigger city was that it felt like. Less of it was in my control. Right. And there was just a lot of osmotic impact.
Yep. Some of which ended up being good. Some of it wasn't. You bet. Right. Some of it was just, it ends up just being time draining. Time wasting. Right. Because everybody, because at some point like that you have marketable things that people wanna talk about too, too. It's not just about what you're gonna take from the networks, but what you're gonna give. Um, and I found that there was often an imbalance in that for me, and, and that it made me. A little less deliberate.
Like at some point when you're, when you're in the fish or in the barrel with the fish, you're, you become a little less picky around like who you're interacting with. Whereas now that's a five. We've got LinkedIn, right? We've got plenty of other social media. We've got social media X, we've got all of it. It's crazy. Talk to anybody. I want to anytime I want to because that's become such a thing. Yeah, I think two things have happened for me.
One, I meet 10 x more people now than I ever met before and again, and I was doing like five to seven in person meetings where I would reach out to people to get to sit down with them for no purpose, by the way, just to get to know them. And it was. Exhausting, right? Probably. Yeah. So for them, uh, but, but my point is, it's exactly what you said. I could only meet with the people that happen to be in my geography or that I would bump into.
Okay. Yeah. And I tried to, you know, create as many opportunities for that to happen. I met great people. However, when it comes to who do I need to meet, like professionally. I can DM anybody right now, anybody. Right. Like it blows my mind. And, and it also happens that like when I DM somebody that I really need to meet the probability anymore that they're in LA or San Francisco or where I would've otherwise been is damn near zero. Yeah, right.
It is not zero because again, there's still, you know, more people there. But like for some reason, the first person that comes to mind, not that I, I'm trying to meet, but I was DMing with recently, is Dan Martel. Uh, right. And Dan, I'm not knocking his location, but is in BFE Canada, if I recall right. Moncton, I think is what it's called. And I love that. I love that because like Dan just hit a million YouTube subscribers.
Right. You know, he's Johnny Social now, but he is in Moncton, Canada, dude. Yeah, right. Like Dan wouldn't have been able to meet anyone 15 years ago. In Moncton Canada. Well, to be fair, Moncton is known as the San Francisco of absolutely nowhere. It's not, this is me giving Dan a shout out, by the way. Um, I, I, I make sure it comes out the right way because Dan in Moncton can be the most popular person, uh, in business. Anywhere he wants, anywhere he wants doesn't matter right now.
Again, I had to do that same thing with an ungodly amount of physical effort with in-person events, et cetera. And Dan's doing it without even leaving his hometown. What I'm saying is that level of connectivity just didn't exist at the level it does now. No, even remotely. Something else is funny about that, right? Like the fact that we, we have this digital, like on one hand it's a lot easier to just reach out digitally. I don't know how it was for you.
But, and, and maybe this is even, I'm, I'm, now I'm trying to figure out, this is like more of like a post pandemic kind of thing. When I do get in-person introductions, not in-person introductions, but maybe like somebody local, like, Hey, somebody here that wants to sit down with you. I almost always say yes. Part of that might just be the rarity, but part of it's kinda like it feels rude to say no. Yep.
Whereas. With digital outreach, I think it forces people to be a little bit more deliberate, a little bit more polished in the outreach, A little more purposeful. Whereas like before people could just reach out and be like, Hey, you know, I'm, I'm gonna be in town. Would you like to get together? Like, yeah. Okay. Right. Yeah. Whereas if somebody reached out to me on LinkedIn, they're like, Hey, do you need offshore web development services for an app that you're not building? No, I don't.
Right. I don't have to spend time on that. And so like, I think it's somehow by being digital, despite the fact that we have this ability to reach anybody, it's raised the bar a little bit for what that communication looks like. I actually appreciate it a lot. Pointing to Dan for a second. What I'm saying is Dan has a massive profile Yeah. In Moncton, uh, you know, sitting in Moncton, Canada. Right. I'm just saying that's possible. Whereas it wasn't before.
Again, this isn't the same as like if I was 27 years old and someone was like, Hey, you should move to New York, or you know, San Francisco or something. I would do it right because it would cost me nothing. It'd buy me a ton. Great big city experience. I did it. It was awesome. What I'm saying is now I just wouldn't have to before you have to, I had to, I didn't have a choice. Yeah, right. Now I just don't have to. And that's a big deal.
You don't have to move to San Francisco to, to, to find work, right? Yeah. Like you can go anywhere when Yeah. I think the minute it went from being a prerequisite to a nice to have, if I want to have it, maybe not even a nice to have, it's a a if you want it. Right. It became completely discretionary. That was super powerful in, in so many ways. Right. Look like we've, we've talked about a lot of stuff like there, there are still some advantages.
Of course there are, right, there are advantages like things like you mentioned, these serendipitous meetings and cultural immersion, some of the stuff that I'm moving for, right? But the, but the cost benefit has certainly shifted and I think it's no longer a case of, of necessity and, and more, more like one of desire. But the other side of it is you're, you're not moving for work. Yeah. Also that a hundred percent. Yeah. I mean, that, that's dramatically different.
You're saying, I wanna go have these experiences in this other place. Yep. Now, if, if you guys were, you know, super into skiing, you might be going to Provo, Utah, right? Yes. Like, right, like there might be a totally different outcome. You guys have an amazing, uh, ability as a family to ingratiate yourself in the local culture and, and pull so much from that. But it has nothing to do with your job. No. Nothing. Right? Nothing whatsoever. Now there will be benefits.
In fact, we've gone, we've gone through some of that recently because there was then this, this kind of toss up between Madrid and possibly Valencia, which gets us on a coast. And there was some other, it's a little bit smaller, a little bit maybe easier to, to end up in. And then we went back to it like, but why are we actually doing this? Right? And a big part of it is for some of that bigger city stuff. And for me, from a work perspective, there are some, there are some pluses to Madrid.
It's a much bigger commercial center. There are way more startups there than there were going to be in Valencia. Are there as many as there are in, in San Francisco or New York? No. But it's still from where I am now, it's gonna be a massive increase. And so there will be benefits, but is again, but it's not, we don't have to make the choice based on that. Again, it's, it's not, and that's really what we're saying is isn't relevant. Right. It's just a lot less relevant than it was.
It's changed from a you have to do it. Mm. It could benefit in certain ways. Yeah. Like when Sarah and I moved to San Francisco, you know, I certainly had a, a single unified goal, which was, at the time we were buying companies and most of the companies we were looking to buy were there. And it worked out great, you know? Yep. It, it, it really worked out. But from Sarah's perspective, you know, uh, my daughter Summer had just been born, I think she was five or so at the time.
She just wanted an adventure. She was like, Hey, cool. This is just something new, right. I don't, something fun, something different. Yeah. The commercial aspect doesn't matter to me, and she got to explore it, et cetera. After a while, she was like, guess what? This city's terrifying. Yeah. I've seen it all. No cross. You can cross it an hour. And I've seen it all. I'm good.
It's the part they don't put in the brochure, but you know, Sarah would, would, would leave our building, uh, with a five-year-old in a stroller. It would not go well. It was, it was a very dangerous place for a woman in her. A little tiny daughter to be walking around there. There's reason you don't see any kids in San Francisco. Yes. They're all adults anyway. Um, this wasn't a knock on San Francisco.
I'm just saying like if she was going for her own reasons, she would've been out very quickly. Yeah. I would go there and, and I would put up with whatever, because I needed to be there. But now I wouldn't even consider it. I was like, yeah, I would never do that. Not knocking San Francisco. I'd go there for fun. Right. But if we're like, oh, our business has to be there, I'm like, no, no, it does not, does not, does not need to be there.
Yeah. Yeah. I, I think it's so interesting too that like, at this point, because of this, this shift in, in like the, the value of the, sort of the, the perks of being in the traditional hubs, right? That the value. Of the flexibility has actually gone up so much, right? Yep. Now that you really kind of can, I think there were so many things that people didn't even consider before. It just didn't, it didn't occur to people. They could just be wherever they wanted.
Yep. And still do the thing that they wanted to do. And I think that is, in as much as the value of the traditional hub and what you get from it has gone down to some degree. I think that the, the bigger imbalance has actually been created by the value of being able to do what you want can anywhere you want, has actually gone up so significantly.
And I think that for me is what has absolutely made it really hard to say that like there's a huge benefit in being, or that a, the success of a startup is predicated on being in some, somewhere very specific. I'd say the flexibility to be anywhere for me at least. I, a lot of people that we know, uh, would far outweigh the, the perks of the traditional hub. Yeah. So look, I, I think what, what we're saying isn't that cities don't have their value. Cities have value. We love cities, right?
We've lived in them. What we're saying is in this day and age, you would be hard pressed to make an argument that says you have to relocate to a major city or a specific location in order for your startup to be successful. The, the truth is there are so many things that have changed so dramatically that you can take advantage of that you just don't need to do it. So I would say at this point, when somebody asks you that question to say. Hey, where's your startup based?
Your answer is wherever the hell we want it to be. And I'm damn okay with that overthinking your startup because you're going it alone. You don't have to, and honestly, you shouldn't because instead, you can learn directly from peers who've been in your shoes. Connect with bootstrapped founders and the advisors helping them win in the startups.com community. Check out the startups.com [email protected] to see if it's for you. Could be just the thing you need. I hope to see you inside.