Best Place To Start A Company If You Have Kids

I like the near suburbs of Seattle. Cheaper than B.C. and also home to a lot of tech talent and some VCs and incubators. Also a lot of tech jobs at established companies to fall back on if your startup fails. WA also has great schools and lots of family/outdoor activities.<p>I honestly don't understand how anyone can afford to live in B.C. Victoria is beautiful, but I don't see how there are enough high-paying jobs to support the prices there. Unless the locals somehow pay much less for everything than tourists do.<p>Vancouver, fuhgeddaboutit. The Chinese investors have driven the prices for formerly middle class homes into the millions.

To me its less about the location, than how you go about running your startup. As Jeff says, working from home and distributed teams help a lot. In my experience that can enable you to maintain a very healthy engagement with your family while still working at founder-desperate levels. For example I picked up the kids from school every day and spent some time with them in the afternoon, which refreshed me to do much more work in the evening.<p>Of course, there will be times when founders need to be on the road a lot. But putting these trips on top of a base of family engagement makes them a lot less painful for all involved.

Vancouver Island represent! :)<p>I am also in Victoria BC (moved here in the summer of 2012 with my three young children and it's been great).<p>Anyone else in the area? Any interest in a small meet-up?<p>(NB. Your email address must appear in the <i>about</i> field of your profile if you want to get email from people. The "email" field is only visible to HN admins)

Hey hey hey.. Stop with the geography already, everyone. Just read what this guy's saying.<p><pre><code> The best place to start a company with kids is next to your family. </code></pre> And he is 100% right.

Does anyone else see the irony of Silicon Valley? We have hoards of people who worship at the idol of mobile technology, all crowded together living in each other's backyard when a system is in place that presently allows any sort of communication with anyone, anywhere in real time. The only reason to live in and around Silicon Valley is to live in and around Silicon Valley. If you think you can't make a lot of money unless you live in Silicon Valley or Austin, Texas, then you might want to remember Id Software, Sierra, Valve, and the list just isn't limited to gaming. If you want to play the game of "please give me money so I can make money", then it probably helps to live near the investors you need to brown nose, but if you want to build your own company like John Carmack did, then live whereever the hell you want and use the technology you insist is changing the world to change the world. I'm moving to the moon.

There is no best place to start a company. Only a best place for you.

You don't have to have family nearby to have kids.

Really, most of BC is awesome in terms of a place to live. My favourite areas are the island, the Kootenay's, and the Okanagan valley. Love ability to experience different seasons in the interior.<p>That said, I highly doubt there is a "best" place to start a business. Might be good places, or even better places, but no "best" place. Choosing a good place is a complex mix of where you can have connections, where there is a market (if applicable) and where you can lead a satisfying life.

Having left my native western Oregon for sunnier pastures, the thought of moving to Vancouver for the 'good weather' puts a bit of a smile on my face, but in any case I always like to hear about people making a go of it in !Silicon Valley, so +1 from me.<p>I'm kind of curious about Boulder, CO - it seems to be small enough that it's more livable for a family, as well as having a very well-educated populace, some nice outdoors stuff, and a growing startup community.

Hey, Victoria! Also, your guy Mat Harvard is in my class.

Sweden.