

Ask HN: Is it possible to commute into a Bay Area startup? - SoftwareMaven

I am a great type of person to have at a startup. I am a product manager who can actually code (and not Excel, I've got code in the Erlang VM and have extended CouchDB for our needs), which means I know how to decide what to build and how to build it, too. There is no skill at a startup more important than knowing what to build, IMO, and I would love to use my product management skills to help a startup.<p>I don't generally fit in at large companies as a result of my schizophrenic career personality and the startup ecosystem where I'm at is marginal. I've been working at a startup for the last 18 months (in a weird, not-quite-founder way). The "not-quite" part has become untenable for me, so it's time to move on.<p>Is it possible to become involved with the Bay Area startup scene without moving to the Bay Area? For personal reasons, I am unable to move to the Bay Area, though I am close enough that I could commute in regularly and, since I'm outside of the Bay Area, I could use some of the salary difference to cover that.<p>I recognize this likely wouldn't work for a two-person startup, but is it possible to get involved early in a place this way? If so, how would you go about breaking in?
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BillSaysThis
In my experience Product Manager is a difficult job for telecommuting in an
early stage startup as you need to be communicating frequently with so many
different people/functions and even video chat isn't really the same thing as
"let's grab a whiteboard and brainstorm it" or "come on this customer call
with me in 10 minutes."

However I've seen and worked with plenty of developers this way, in fact my
company just added three or four remote folks and in my previous team half
were in the office and half scattered across the East.

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kstenerud
It doesn't matter where you live so long as you can be there during a similar
timeframe as the rest of the founders.

All startups are recruiting to varying degrees, but recruiting the right
people is hard, and so we tend to prefer recruiting through contacts.

From a job seeker's position, getting involved requires contacts in order to
reach founders, and contacts come from socializing. Go to some of the many
startup mixers that happen in the area and get to know some influential
people. They're the ones who will introduce you to the right founders.

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thetylerhayes
_Is it possible to become involved with the Bay Area startup scene without
moving to the Bay Area?_

Yes.

 _[...] is it possible to get involved early in a place this way?_

Yes.

 _If so, how would you go about breaking in?_

I would do, and did, everything I could think of. I'm not being hyperbolic.
The answer to "Should I [action X]?" is always "Yes." Just do it.

