It was just like any other day, and I was going out to lunch with some coworkers in downtown Davis. We decided to get Thai food at Sophia’s Thai Kitchen which I can’t recommend enough, and as we were walking through the courtyard I happened to glance up towards the second story to see a logo on a piece of paper taped to the window on the door. The logo was for the virtual-world computer game called Second Life, which is created by a company called Linden Lab.

About a year ago when I was pitching to VCs, I had a day with two presentations in San Francisco basically back-to-back. One was in the financial district and the other near North Beach which was about 20 minute walk, so I just walked. I ended up accidentally finding out where Linden Lab’s HQ is, so I was definitely surprised when I found out they have a satellite office in Davis. It makes sense really, there’s a lot of talented computer scientists and graphics/visualization researchers at the university. Once upon a time I was actually part of the big visualization research group at Davis called IDAV, but I was doing 3D audio research rather than graphics.

So this begs the question… what about Davis for a startup? There’s plenty of discussion about Sacramento as a potential tech hub and a hotbed for startups, but nobody ever mentions Davis. For Tubes I’ve had my eye on Davis and Berkeley, and since I already know Davis well and it’s cheaper maybe that’s the starting point for us. Why not Sacramento, San Francisco, or Mountain View?

1. Davis is cheaper than the Bay Area. The commercial rents are relatively high and housing is still insane, but salaries are much less and there are many surrounding cheaper areas to live in. Measure K just passed and Target is going into Davis, so maybe that will help stir some growth and thus lower housing costs.
2. The town is alive. The downtown is full of great restaurants and everything is walkable.
3. Everything is walkable. In the downtown area you can walk anywhere in less than 10 minutes. Anywhere else in Davis is very reachable by bike. This is important if you hire people who don’t drive. Maybe they just don’t own a car, or maybe they’re coming from an environment like San Francisco where many people tend not to use their cars. Many companies are going primarily virtual as well, and if I brought anybody over from Europe they’d likely not be used to driving.
4. While Davis may have no resemblance to reality, it’s close to it. The Bay Area is a doable day trip, and Lake Tahoe is close. There’s also a shuttle that goes back and forth between Davis and the Sacramento airport.
5. There’s a whole university to draw help/talent from. And I’m starting to use it. Tubes’ newest advisor is one of my former Music professors.

So there you have it, 5 great reasons why Davis is an optimal place to start a company. Please make a comment if you have more reasons and want to add to this list.