Silicon Mountain vs Silicon Valley
Silicon Mountain is the best place to be for established startups. I just moved from to Denver aka Silicon Mountain having lived in Silicon Valley, founding 2 companies there. FloWater, a Series B startup (later stage startup) I joined has also recently moved from Silicon Valley to Denver. Both Silicon Valley and Silicon Mountain are great places to base a startup and live!
There are many advantages that Silicon Mountain has that Silicon Valley does not. For startups, there’s tons of tech talent here. Meetups are active. CU (University of Colorado) has strong programs in STEM. The SuperComputing Conference is in Denver. That alone to me was enough to convince me that there’s talent here, and you have the BIG advantage of not competing against the giants like Google, Facebook, and Apple for talent. One of the biggest problems I had in Silicon Valley was worrying about your best team member leaving you for Google. That is the stuff that keeps you up at night. Silicon Valley may be the best place to fundraise, but thanks to our Series B, we don’t have to worry about that as much anymore.
For living in Denver, there are also tons of huge advantages! First off the sun! Denver has more days of sunshine than any other state. Yes, more than California and more than Florida “the sunshine state.” Second, the great outdoors! Biking, hiking, skiing, skateboarding; we got it all! There’s also some of the most beautiful parks in the world like Cheeseman and Confluence Park. Colorado is the healthiest and fittest state as well! A lot of people bike to work (including myself) and there are many safe bike paths, even a bike highway along the creek lined with murals (cherry creek)! Also, because a lot of people bike to work, there’s way less traffic compared to California. At most times of the day, you will pull up to a traffic light and there are less than 4 cars in front of you.
Besides the outdoors, the city is also beautiful. Downtown Denver is the cleanest downtown I have ever seen. You can breathe easy with no huge tracks blowing gas in your face or harsh smells of pollution. You can walk for miles without a speck of trash on the ground! Hats off to the people that really cleaned up Denver. The buildings are new and modern. Every neighborhood looks like it is straight out of The Sims. Also, did I mention that Colorado has the most breweries per capita and 4 of the top breweries in the nation! To top it off, Denver has a variety of amazing foods from different regions of the world. For example, Sushi Den has fish flown in from Japan every day! Who does that?!? Do you like All You Can Eat hot pot? You’ve got plenty of options as well. There’s also great Mexican, Persian, Indian, Native American…the list goes on!
Personally, I have never gone past an early-stage Series A/Seed startup so this is a new and exciting experience for me. In an early-stage startup, you have early-stage problems like your product breaking every couple hours or launching the beta. In Series B, you face vastly different problems like how do you scale nationwide? How do you scale worldwide? How do you grow 3–5x per year? All are exciting challenges I am stoked to help solve!
I joined FloWater because of the mission. Never have I seen a company that could make such a big impact on the world. Saving a billion bottles from landfills and revolutionizing the poisonous industry of single-use plastic water bottles. My role as a Project Manager is vastly different from being a Co-Founder. I do not have to make every call and every decision. I can forward emails to others and let them handle it. I have plenty of people I can ask for help, get resources from others in my team, and the big one…not have to worry about making payroll! I can take risks and aim for ambitious goals without worrying about if my decisions will make or break the company.
In short, there is a lot of freedom in not being a Co-Founder where everything is your problem, every decision is your decision, and every decision could make or break the company. There’s also the benefits of actually having health insurance, paid time off, team events, and tons of other perks I could not afford as a Co-Founder. Did I mention that we have a box suite at the Rockies games?!
The work I am doing is also still impactful even though I am not the Co-Founder. I get to work on new things every day and help take the company to places it has never gone before. We are growing rapidly, building out our team, and innovating daily. All of these things I did as a Co-Founder, just in a different realm. Shameless plug: we are hiring a ton of people! If anything I wrote above sounds exciting to you apply here and I will give you a referral! Not in Denver? Not a problem. We have plenty of open positions elsewhere and the majority of our team are Denver transplants. I moved here with 2 suitcases and a Lyft XL. The rest of my house was ordered and shipped for FREE for under $1k total. Peep my Amazon List here. Cost of living is also super low here, especially if you move from California, New York, Seattle, or Hawaii, you will be saving a ton! I live 2 miles from work and pay under $1k a month! I am less than 10 minutes away from Coor’s Field, Pepsi Center, Mile High Stadium and tons of breweries and some of the hottest restaurants in town.
In conclusion, I am really enjoying myself here in Denver. If anyone wants to talk about FloWater, Denver, startups, my transition out of Co-Founder life, or anything like that feel free to ping me! Also, if you are ever in town, I’ll buy you a beer and show you around!
