Best New Places To Get Away From It All - News Briefs

Industry Standard, The, Feb 19, 2001 by Kevin Roderick

So you're looking for a remote -- but wired -- home base. No problem. It's never been so easy to run a business from paradise.

OUR TOP PICK: San Luis Obispo, California It has rolling hills, lush vineyards and a historic mission -- and it's only 10 miles from the Pacific. But San Luis Obispo has something else: A thriving Internet community. Come here for work and play.

Working in his garage office in Prescott, Ariz., Ted King peered out the window at a local peak to come up with the name of his new company -- Wireless Mountain Laboratories. After gazing some more he had a second inspiration: There must be a better place to launch a business and enjoy life than in the remote forest of central Arizona.

King searched for four months before discovering his geographic nirvana amid the pinot noir vineyards and rolling grasslands of California's central coast. He and three employees made the move in 1999 and now sell radio-based inventory-tracking devices from a converted nursery in the college town of San Luis Obispo, population 43,000. It is a bit isolated -- 200 miles from Silicon Valley to the north and Los Angeles to the south -- but that's a good thing, King says. It keeps costs down and allows for a more rounded life.

Refugees and businesses from large cities are drawn to San Luis Obispo in part for its small-town California lifestyle. A creek meanders through a charming downtown of small bookstores, antique shops and cafes opening onto tree-shaded sidewalks. Old Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa, built by Spanish friars in 1772, forms the town's historic heart. Bike lanes trek through neighborhoods, a sign of the town's environmentalist bent, and every Thursday evening several blocks of downtown are closed off for a huge street fair and farmer's market, where smoky barbecues and tables of fresh produce remind you that this is still the country. Add nearby beaches, hot springs and a National Public Radio station to the mix and it's no wonder that San Luis Obispo has become a magnet for techies who like to bring their mountain bikes to the office and execs who want to get away from the pressure cooker of Silicon Valley.

"Any of these people could drive up to San Jose and get a job for more money, but it wouldn't mean much," King says. "They like it here."

King, the founder and 20 percent owner of privately held Wireless Mountain, isn't the sort who dashes off at lunch to catch a few waves. His personal reward for living here is a country estate in the beach town of Nipomo. But the ability to mix work with a casual, healthy lifestyle is important to his 14 local employees. "I couldn't grow a big international company in Prescott, but I can here," King says. "You need a pool of talent to draw on."

Much of that talent comes from California Polytechnic University at San Luis Obispo. Part of the state university system, Cal Poly ranked ninth -- just behind West Point, the U.S. Naval Academy and the U.S. Air Force Academy -- in this year's U.S. News and World Report national evaluation of engineering and technology schools that award bachelor's and master's degrees. Many recent graduates remain in the area or are happy to be lured back by startups or companies establishing offices here.

These include software maker ALH Group, which relocated from Manhattan Beach, Calif., in 1998, and Menlo Park, Calif.-based SRI International, a nonprofit think tank that has spun off more than 30 companies. Many local firms manufacture tech products. Located in downtown San Luis Obispo, Logic Plus designs the inner electronics for games, robots and a line of interactive dolls made by Mattel. Ziatech, an Intel subsidiary, employs about 200 people making and selling servers and communications equipment.

"We can attract a lot of young people who want to stay around here," says Hassan Miah, a Hollywood veteran who came here and founded Xing Technology, which helped develop file-swapping technology and was bought in 1999 by RealNetworks.

Miah, formerly the head of new media at Creative Artists Agency in Beverly Hills, also founded SloMedia, a company that develops digital entertainment software. It's currently based in the heart of downtown, but Miah is leading a migration to a fledgling industrial zone near the city's airport that officials hope will become a hub for technology firms. Miah broke ground in November on a 56,000-square-foot complex that was specially equipped with high-speed Internet access to attract software companies, especially in entertainment. SloMedia will occupy half of the space and lease the rest. "I'm pretty bullish on the area," Miah says.

The new complex will help address the main obstacle to San Luis Obispo's emergence as a full-fledged tech center: the city's long-standing slow-growth policies and the consequent tight market for office and manufacturing space. The community's skittishness about growth dates to the 1980s, when locals were stunned by an influx of Los Angeles retirees and white-fighters who erected suburban tract boxes in the surrounding pastures.