BankSimple moves to Portland

Portland is one of my favorite American cities. But if you're freely choosing somewhere to relocate to, I would think Seattle would be a tough competitor. It's nearby, has a bigger tech community, and has Washington's zero state income tax versus Oregon with the highest state income tax in the country at 11% for the top bracket.

The Pearl District in Portland is nice and all but I'll never understand why you would want an office there, especially if you aren't a business that requires a trendy, hip image. A web-based business with no front door is going to pay a TON per square foot just to be downtown.<p>Is it the address they are after? The need to impress investors? It's already expensive enough to run a business, why burden yourself and your employees with a completely irrelevant location?<p>I do live and work here and love the city, I just don't get the appeal of working downtown. The company I currently work for left downtown before I joined and I'm glad they did. Not many people live downtown and getting to and from work every day would take longer for me (and many others) than it does now. Not to mention an added cost of parking or taking mass transit.

Portland seems to be attracting a lot of hackers lately, so it will be interesting to see if the startup scene and investment money follow.

I really love Portland, and I'm sure it's a great new home for BankSimple, but I am a little shocked that a company would move to a city where literally everyone in the company would have to be relocated. I've seen companies move to SF or NY before because of VC raised, but this is almost the opposite!

From anecdotal experience, it does seem like Portland is drawing a lot of talented folks. It is definitely a "bike to work, complain at city hall and drink obscure beer" crowd, but is that such a bad thing?

Still waiting on that invite I signed up for what seems like a year ago.<p>Can't leave Fifth Third soon enough.

Does this have anything at all to do with the new California money transmission laws?

The dream of the 90's is alive in portland: <a href="http://www.hulu.com/watch/205428/portlandia-i-dream-of-the-90s" rel="nofollow">http://www.hulu.com/watch/205428/portlandia-i-dream-of-the-9...</a>

As someone from Portland, Maine, I always get a little miffed when people don't specify that this is Portland, Oregon.<p>Yeah, Portland, Oregon's metro area is about 4x the size of that of Maine's largest city, but it's not like it's an order of magnitude or anything.<p>Maybe I'm just jealous that there's more going on there than here. :(

Can this be related to the fact that Oregon has no Sales Tax?<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sales_taxes_in_the_United_States#Oregon" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sales_taxes_in_the_United_State...</a>

Portland is basically where San Francisco was at 20 years ago.<p>In terms of a tech hub, the only thing missing is a stronger university presence.

Portland is a great town.... but seriously gastro-pubs are silly, get some real restaurants people.

Portland? WTF? Why? It's a hipster dump. Rains 9 months a year, has 12% perpetual unemployment, plus the USA's largest resident homeless population, which isn't terribly shocking given the awful job market. But, if you can actually get a job the salary will be circa 1994 and yet the property and rent prices are in fantasy land stuck in the 2006 housing bubble. Oh, plus the city has one of the highest suicide rates in the nation. Great place to live if you like being wet, underemployed, and depressed.<p>Glad I got out of that dump, if you want to have a future you need to be in Boston, NYC, or The Valley.

BankSimple == Duke Nukem Forever