"What you'll get: Free Room & board [...]"<p>"What is expected of you: [...] You pay for your own food"<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_and_board" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_and_board</a>
I lived in the KC area (Overland Park) for a short while and loved it. The people are friendly, there is loads to do, and it's cheap to live there. The downsides for me were the lack of startup software jobs and the weather, tornados specifically.<p>Now I'm here in SF and paying double the rent for a place half the size of my place in KC, seeing something like this is very intriguing. Especially since I'm trying to bootstrap my own startup and feeling a bit lost in a sea of Silicon Valley startups!
Never in my life did I expect that "Everything's Up to Date in Kansas City" would be true again.<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSbz_ciFSn4&t=1m09s" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSbz_ciFSn4&t=1m09s</a>
Grew up in KC (Shawnee, specifically). If you are from a large coastal city and want to get acquainted with life in the Midwest, KC is a good start. Certainly less of a shock than, say, Omaha or Wichita.
Any idea when the first Google Fiberhoods will go live? Even if someone is interested in hosting - this may not work till later this year or early next year depending on which fiberhood they live in.
I have been wondering why metro Kansas City is home to a lot of interesting projects: Open Source Ecology, The Urban Farming Guys, Google Fiber. For a mid-sized city, it has a maker space and a Ruby User's Group. But what's in Kansas City?<p>Tax-write-off wars and the Big 5. Awesome.
Lived just outside KC for most of my youth, part of my adult life. Moved west to Seattle, and haven't looked back.<p>Kudos to the locals for trying to pull young entrepreneurs to KC. The town needs a jolt of options outside the typical corporate-IT-office-park-in-the-burbs.<p>One thing about KC is culture. The people are really nice, but the midwest is so substantively different from the coasts. In Seattle and the bay area, technology is king -- it's dominant from an industry perspective. Not the case in KC, and it's not going to be anytime soon. Whether you, as a possible startup entrepreneur, care about that is personal, but make no mistake -- the local culture is not around tech.<p>A second knock on KC -- the good local talent doesn't hang around. Historically, competence in technology has not been rewarded; thus, the good companies tend to see young up-and-comers depart for greener pastures.<p>Want to start your technology company in KC? I would say it's a bad bet. Cost of living is cheaper than many other places, but you get what you pay for; expect access to technical talent to be challenging.
I just signed up. If already owning a startup isn't a prerequisite, this would be a great opportunity for me to switch from my current environment and day job to focusing on building something full time.
How is the culture there?<p>* Westboro Baptist Church is in Topeka, KS (65 miles away)<p>* a professor was beaten in Lawrence, KS (30 miles away) (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Mirecki#Intelligent_Design_controversy" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Mirecki#Intelligent_Design...</a>)
I lived in Kansas City most of my life. Here is my take on living in Kansas City and building a start-up here.<p>1. Climate.
There is no mild weather in KC. Summers are excruciatingly hot. Winters can sometimes be very cold and snowy. Tornadoes can get pretty scary at times, but 90% of the time there is nothing to worry about. I've seen a couple of touchdowns in 15 years. Most of the time i just hear about them.<p>2. Cost of Living.
Rent is fairly cheap. If you're single and want to be in the middle of all the action a single bedroom place on the Plaza will probably run you around $800. Power & Light district will likely be around the same price. Westport area is going to be cheaper around $600. If you don't mind the drive, you can probably find a decent place in North Kansas City for around $500-$600. Want to buy a house? ~$250K in the burbs for a nice 4 bedroom house 20 minutes away from the center. 2-3 bedroom homes are around $160K-$200K.<p>3. Traffic.
KC is backed up all over the place between 8-9am and 5-6pm. When the rush-hour is over, it is a pleasure to drive here.<p>4. Nightlife.
You have the new Power & Light district with tons of bars and clubs open 24/7. You have the old Westport area with it's own vibe. If you're from the Bay Area, you'll likely fit right in here. It's a very hip place. Plaza, Zona Rosa and The Legends are great place to shop and get a bite to eat around day time and up until midnight. KC occupies pretty massive territory, but it actually isn't a big city and it can get old pretty quick. So keep that mind, especially if you're single or a young couple. You'll be running into the same people over and over again before you know it. :)<p>5. Recreation.
KC has beautiful lakes, nature and wildlife. 30 minutes away from the center and you're pretty much on camping grounds. Getting around on foot is pretty tough and even impossible in some places. You really need to have a car here. Sidewalks are non-existent in many neighborhoods. There is always something going on in the city. Lots of concerts and outside events in the summer. Not so much in the winter.<p>6. Tech Scene & Job market.
KC doesn't really have a good techy/entrepreneurial scene. It has strong corporate IT sector, which is booming. Good developers are still very hard to come by. Most companies are more than willing to dish out 100K+ if you know what you're doing. The interesting thing about Kansas City businesses is that most of them aren't looking for rockstars or ninjas. They're looking for someone who can fit in with the rest of the team. This is not a bad thing, but more often than not you wind up working with really incompetent people who fit in but don't know squat. It's also very hard to find interesting work. The hottest thing is IT jobs supporting internal development in financial and medical sectors. There are some prominent tech companies in the area like Sprint, Garmin, Honeywell & Cerner, but most are just not very appealing in terms of life/work balance, innovation and quality of work.<p>7. Want to run a start-up from KC?
Hmm... I don't know. Finding good developers is a pretty hard task here. Finding talented developers is inexplicably difficult. Most folks who know their craft are no longer in KC. You basically have to know people who know people. Tech conferences are usually full of talented folks. The great thing about KC is the lower cost of living. You can make a comfortable living on 60K/year, but as a developer you can easily make 100K here and have plenty of time & money to invest in your own start-up while working full-time elsewhere. So in that respect, it is a pretty good place to build a start-up.
This is sad because any people who take them up on this offer will contribute increased taxes to the USA which will then use that money to implement things like PATRIOT and a bunch of unnecessary foreign wars.<p>Try again somewhere that doesn't use most of its government revenue in destructive ways, and maybe this would be worthwhile.<p>Seriously, it's time to leave the USA. If you want to encourage migration and innovation, do it somewhere outside of the borders. The world is a big place and not all of it is insane like the USA.