If a startup has a cool mission, a cool tech stack, -and- operates in an area with a low cost of living, low congestion, and plenty of culture, art, and restaurant variety/quality, it can compete quite nicely with yet another Silicon Valley company when it comes to attracting talent.
Relocation for a startup? If your startup employer fails, you are stuck in a city far away from your support network. If you chanced a startup in the city you lived in, at least you could recover quickly, get a new job, whatever.
Relocation can work well for more established companies (and even then, two body problems often kill that), but it doesn't make sense at all for a semi-risky startup.
What happened to all those startups that "need to hire people to build (your) company", to quote the prior post and argument? I mean, you "have dozens of options on the same block." Just take a job with one of them.
EDIT: A bit more seriously, and to your argument in particular, that's where low cost of living comes in your favor. "Hmm, I could take $90k in Silicon Valley where I will have to be careful with my budget, or I could take $75k in St. Louis, where I will live comfortably"; why in the world would you accept a startup in the Valley (thus moving there) given that decision, all other factors being equal (they're not, but there are plenty in favor of St. Louis, as this article points out)?
You're showing yourself willing to move (a software dev willing to relocate will not be short of a job for long; heck, you could always later -look- to move to the Valley), and you'll be able to sock away funds for emergencies much more easily..
You moved for a startup because it was a great fit for your skills, the startup failed...now what? If there are only a few other startups, what is to say one will be a good fit? Also, your network isn't fully developed yet, maybe you've only been in town for 6 months...getting the right job via word of mouth will be very difficult.
If you don't believe developers are basically exchangeable commodities, then it is easy to see that we need a very large pool of jobs + a decent support network to find those jobs.
SF having critical mass of startups and people you already know (they moved from where you were before) makes it very appealing. SLT has none of that.
I wonder if startups should offer a last resort re-relocation signing bonus. Although the signalling is counter-intuitive, this way everybody at least acknowledges the riskiness of a typical startup.
Worst case, the employee really needed the cash and used it for something else, but nobody could say that the startup didn't try to soften potential hard landings.
If a startup has a cool mission, a cool tech stack, -and- operates in an area with a low cost of living, low congestion, and plenty of culture, art, and restaurant variety/quality, it can compete quite nicely with yet another Silicon Valley company when it comes to attracting talent.