Young entrepreneurs thinking about San Diego (Encinitas: apartments, quality of life, places to live)

[citylife15]

Me and my friend have a profitable online business. We are 24 year old entrepreneurs. We are based out of a suburb about 30 mins from New York City in Long Island. We are thinking about making the move out to San Diego for at least the summer. We found very affordable 2 bedroom apartments for $1,500-2,000. If we were to consider moving to NYC, we'd be spending anywhere from $4,000-5,000 (it's such a ripoff). I heard better things about SD than LA and heard SD is one of the best places to live. I really don't like the craziness that NYC has to offer; at times it can be overwhelming and it's ridiculously expensive. We are leaning towards Pacific Beach in SD being that I have heard nothing but great things. Any recommendations? Am I making the right choice?

[oddstray]

For the summer? Sure, why not. And check out LA while you're here to see if that suits you any better.

For Pacific Beach? Some parts of Pacific Beach are full of partiers. That may not be conducive to doing business, so be careful where in PB you find yourselves.

[bouncethelight]

Come out and visit, and see it for yourself. You really won't know if Pacific Beach is right for you, until you spend some time there.

That said, I love Pacific Beach - it can be overrun with partiers at certain times of day and night and year, but it's a great little beach town, with some fun places to see live music!

Each of the beach towns has a very different vibe - so if Pacific Beach isn't quite right for you, just head up the coast and see La Jolla, Encinitas, etc.

[tonyinsd]

Lots of entrepreneurs set up shop here in San Diego. Truth be told, I've run into more of these types of people here in San Diego in two years than I did in twenty in the DC area.

[earlyretirement]

I've met a few fellow entrepreneurs here in San Diego but it's no where compared to the Bay Area.

I think San Diego is the PERFECT city for the Entrepreneur that doesn't have to be tied down to an office and can work remotely. Before I sold one of my companies back in 2010, I was working insane hours (up to 17 hours a day). But once I sold it, I knew that San Diego would be the perfect place to live. I've been all over the world and to almost every state in the USA and I still say that San Diego is probably the city with the highest overall quality of life.

The weather here is incredible! So much to see and do here and needless to say the beaches are incredible. A very laid back lifestyle and the city has a very relaxed and good vibe to it for being such a big city.

I have a remote office in another city but I don't need to go there too often and just work from home.

Rents here are higher than many cities around the country but no where near the kind of prices in New York City (in good areas). Unless you needed to be in NYC to be near major clients or any other specific reason, I'd avoid it. There are services you can sign up for if you need a physical location for mail, etc. where you can get a prime office address and get your mail there and they can forward your mail, etc. Also, there are great services like www.virtualpostmail.com that I've used for a while and really great if you need a physical office address in California and don't want to use your apartment. And I've used www.efax.com since the first year they started and always had great experiences and have fax #'s in 4 countries with them. Very dependable.

If you run an online business it sounds like you can be anywhere so I think San Diego is as good of a place as anywhere. With the technology out there, it makes it easier than ever to work anywhere you want to operate in.

Also, as you grow there is a large pool of talent here that probably you can get away with paying much lower prices than other city as the desire to live here in San Diego is so great. So future hiring needs if you grow should be fairly easy.

Good luck and let us know where you decided to go.

[kettlepot]

And if you need to cut costs there are plenty of places in San Diego that are cheaper than Pacific Beach, or are more centrally located, or more urban.

And if you need more space, or as earlyretirement said, you need to hire someone, you could get more for your money than what you would pay in Pacific Beach.

That being said, enjoy your stay in PB and don't let the babes, beaches, and bars distract you (too much) from your work.