I spent about 9 months in Austin and would recommend against. Weather isn’t all that great and the whole area seems to be getting worse/more California like from what I can tell even in the time I was there (a visitor from CA, haha). Traffic grinds the city to a stop twice a day as there are choke points over the river that aren’t likely to be fixed.
The places I would consider are Boulder, Londonderry or Nashua, and Research Triangle Park. I think you’d be most likely to find relevant commercial properties in RTP.
The other high level consideration I have when considering locations is that the immediate area around the location is so important that you should airbnb some people within 5 minutes walking if at all possible to get an on the ground feel. My impression is that the felt sense of effort to going places is exponential with distance and not linear. So places 20 minutes away aren’t twice the effort of 10 minutes away but more like 4 times the effort or something like that. This means places that look great from a distance vary hugely if you’re 10 minutes away on this or that side of town depending on what’s in the immediate area (<10 minutes walking).
In light of this, having a campus that is 15 minutes away from things is going to feel hugely different from being walking distance to a lively concourse as current offices are and the places I listed are places where you could be closer to a concourse. E.g. in Boulder the main concourse (Pearl St.) is also a few block from a river/nature trail that goes all the way out into dense forest and is quite nice.
I spent about 9 months in Austin and would recommend against. Weather isn’t all that great and the whole area seems to be getting worse/more California like from what I can tell even in the time I was there (a visitor from CA, haha). Traffic grinds the city to a stop twice a day as there are choke points over the river that aren’t likely to be fixed.
The places I would consider are Boulder, Londonderry or Nashua, and Research Triangle Park. I think you’d be most likely to find relevant commercial properties in RTP.
The other high level consideration I have when considering locations is that the immediate area around the location is so important that you should airbnb some people within 5 minutes walking if at all possible to get an on the ground feel. My impression is that the felt sense of effort to going places is exponential with distance and not linear. So places 20 minutes away aren’t twice the effort of 10 minutes away but more like 4 times the effort or something like that. This means places that look great from a distance vary hugely if you’re 10 minutes away on this or that side of town depending on what’s in the immediate area (<10 minutes walking).
In light of this, having a campus that is 15 minutes away from things is going to feel hugely different from being walking distance to a lively concourse as current offices are and the places I listed are places where you could be closer to a concourse. E.g. in Boulder the main concourse (Pearl St.) is also a few block from a river/nature trail that goes all the way out into dense forest and is quite nice.