Its cachet is overblown in most respects. My friends living there joke about it being due to the requirement to drive through the rest of Texas to get there.
The best startups and investment out here tend to be second-tier compared to the Bay Area. It's improving but still small and far from SF-level success. That said, second tier is great compared to everywhere outside of the Bay Area and NYC.
I'd recommend not moving to Central Texas, by the way. Water availability is going to be a huge issue as the population continues to increase. Cities aren't feeling it yet but the small towns on the fringes definitely are - and the issue will continue to spread.
Yea I'm not moving there, but I'm pretty sure they'll figure out the water issue as they always do.
My point was more that there's probably 8-10 metro areas that fall into the "second-tier", but Austin somehow gets pretty consistently thrown out as some alternative to the valley.
But the numbers play out a bit differently. In terms of VC investments, Austin is yes..second-tier (really 3rd, b/c NYC, LA, and Boston make a case for being the 2nd and everyone else is well behind them)..right there with Miami, Chicago, DC, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Dallas, etc. In other words...it's just a regular city that has an ok tech scene.
Not to say that VC money is the only metric by which we should judge, but it's a pretty decent barometer.
