Silicon Valley loves to talk about what makes it special: great universities nearby, a networked VC community, quality of life. But rising rents and crowded freeways have strained that, just as other emerging tech hubs are enticing not only startups but the talented workers who want to work for them.
After years of drawing in educated tech workers, some areas of the Bay Area faced an emigration of workers in 2016, according to U.S. Census data. That’s not only enticing some startups to set down roots outside major tech centers like Silicon Valley and New York, but to find talent who want to put down their own roots in more affordable soil.
Three Reno, Nevada-based startups discussed these themes during a panel discussion at a VentureBeat event to launch its Heartland Tech channel ahead of the 2017 Blueprint conference. At the gathering, founders of the companies told their stories of growth outside the world of tech metropoleis.
The bootstrapped biker
In 2011, Nate Pearson was training for a triathalon. But the $20 per class fee was a little steep for the recent University of Nevada grad, so he came up with a solution: He wrote his own workout software do help him perform training on his own. Not long after that, he recruited his former training coach and launched TrainerRoad, which allows cyclists to do power-based training in their own homes.
Since then, TrainerRoad has grown to 56 employees and become a net-profitable enterprise – all without any venture or angel funding.
Instead, Pearson and his co-founders bootstrapped the company with $10,000 they scraped together and have since financed its growth through cash flows.In contrast to the invest-to-grow-fast attitude of many Silicon Valley startups, TrainerRoad hires employees as it can afford to and markets to a niche user base through its podcast and a support staff that responds to mentions of the app on biker forums. Engineers are recruited via sites like Stack Exchange, mostly hailing outside the Bay Area.
“It’s possible to build a successful startup without VC investment and hiring in the Bay Area,” Pearson told VentureBeat. “There’s not just one way to do it, especially if you’re not shooting for the moon.”
That approach also allows TrainerRoad to focus on training its customers without worrying about investor exit strategies. Its next goals are incorporating more outside analytics and adding more planned workouts. “We may not become a unicorn,” Pearson said, “but we’re expanding on what we’ve built…
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