Is Denver The Next High-Tech Center? (newyorker.com)

An anonymous reader write: "The spread of the tech industry outside Silicon Valley has helped make Denver the fastest-growing large city in the U.S.," reports the New Yorker, saying it's now growing faster than Austin and Seattle, becoming one of America's 20 most populous cities. Cost-conscious investors and tech executives now are opening offices in cheaper "secondary cities" outside of Silicon Valley, like Salt Lake City, and the good universities near Denver mean a well-educated workforce, coupled with a low cost of living.

"Though the city isn't the headquarters for any big tech companies -- like Dell in the Austin area or Microsoft and Amazon in Seattle -- several of them, including IBM and Oracle, have offices here. The presence of those offices, and of the universities, has also helped create a vibrant startup scene: people get educated here or come here for jobs, and then they graduate or leave those jobs and become entrepreneurs." Last year venture capitalists invested $800 million in Demver's tech, energy, food, and marijuana companies, and in 2014 Oracle paid over a billion dollars to acquire Denver-based Datalogix.
Anyone else live in a burgeoning "secondary" tech city? Scott McNealy said he co-founded his data-analysis startup in Denver because in California "The prices of everything have skyrocketed. The regulations. The pension deficit. The traffic. It's just not a fun place to go start."

Comments

Low Cost of Living? Not Compared to Albuquerque

[brian.stinar]

I think the "low cost of living" is relative to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles. The author of this article specifically left San Francisco, which seems to me to be the absolute worst in terms of cost of living.

My cousin lives in Denver. He's been trying to buy a condo. He's been noticing that things go for asking price, or above. He walked away from a condo deal, at asking, because of a totally messed up Home Owner's Association. He'll have to keep looking, but he's feeling a lot of pressure to move quickly due to increasing prices.

I live in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I bought some apartments while in graduate school, working as an intern. Granted, the bank that gave me a loan was shut down for giving too many irresponsible people loans, but I haven't had any problems. My point is, that in a place like Albuquerque, with a very good university and national labs close by, the cost of living is insanely low compared to basically anyplace except rural America, or post-apocalyptic wastelands like Detroit. People that work relatively low-skilled jobs (waiters, waitresses) can buy houses and start families. The lack of existing infrastructure is a HUGE opportunity for people building companies.

Re:I would expect that to be somewhere in China.

[ShanghaiBill]

What does the USA have to offer anymore?

A productive and cooperative workforce. I lived and worked in China for several years. They spend way more time on backstabbing and petty office politics. Organizational loyalty is rare. Since the company doesn't trust the workers, information and decisions are compartmentalized, which degrades productivity even more.

If you need someone to turn a wrench on an assembly line, China is great. If you need innovation and teamwork, America is a much better choice. Even Chinese companies like Baidu have their research division in California.