Nine Takeaways for Startups After Our Global Tour

We just finished GAN’s first Momentum Tour, a four-stop global tour with events in Pittsburgh, Hamburg, Lima, and Manama.

The entire purpose of this tour from the very beginning was to help startups operating in places like these — smaller markets that aren’t considered the world’s major tech hubs — to have additional connections, tools, and resources to build and grow their companies, wherever they are. Which, by the way, is GAN’s mission.

To that end, over the course of each stop, more than a dozen startups shared their experiences of what it’s like to start and run a company in a smaller city. Out of every startup that spoke on stage across the entire tour, only one said they would consider moving their company to a more traditional, larger tech hub. And, when you hear the takeaways below, it makes sense. Companies, by and large, want to stay where they are.

Reflecting back, here are our biggest lessons that might answer why.

Where Smaller Markets Win

Salaries are Cheaper
Mark Thomas of the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance shared that the average tech salary there is $118K versus about $170K in cities like San Francisco and New York. In Lima, investor Alejandro Ponce mentioned that the average tech salary dips below $100K. That means that…