Product Hunt Daily Digest
November 19th, 2019

Would you take $10,000 to leave the Bay Area? This isn’t a rhetorical question — a new experiment called MainStreet will actually pay you to do just that. 🧐

MainStreet’s actual mission is to create more jobs and opportunities in rural and suburban communities in the U.S.

“Our goal as a product and as a company is to link the talent that lives in these communities, with the jobs that are based in expensive urban areas like SF and NY.” — Maker Doug Ludlow wrote on Product Hunt.

Doug and his two co-founders, Dan Lindquist and Daniel Griffin, are all ex-Googlers who want to replicate Google’s remote-friendly culture on a larger scale. They’re starting by bringing together tech companies that don’t want to (or can’t afford) to pay Silicon Valley salaries with employees who are willing to move out of the Bay Area to work remotely. Besides career matchmaking, MainStreet will also train tech workers in remote best practices (like video conferencing) and put them up in a brick-and-mortar MainStreet office with other remote workers. These shared work spaces will first show up in Sacramento, Portland and Salt Lake City. 👋

MainStreet’s longer term goals is to create one million jobs in rural and suburban places over the next decade.

The $10,000 bit is part of MainStreet’s launch strategy — the idea is to draw attention to their mission, and ultimately make people realize that they don’t have to live in the Bay Area (or New York, or Los Angeles) to succeed professionally. According to Doug, the program already has thousands of applicants, a large portion of which are “highly-skilled professionals like engineers, PMs, attorneys, etc.”

Would you do this? We really want to know.

Product Hunt members had some suggestions and questions for the MainStreet team.

“I’d love to see this expand to giving money to people who are actually from SF who have been displaced by the immense gentrification.” - Max

“I'm currently buying property in Maine because I can't handle the tiny apartments and concrete of NYC anymore. Over time, I have a (very ambitious) plan the make the area into a little bit of a hub because I know I will miss the community I have in NYC. I'm curious how you're working with places to make this happen.” - Lola

Share your own thoughts here. 👈

If you’re happy where you’re at, you could always work remotely like we do at the Product Hunt team (across 9 countries). Check out AngelList’s remote job board if you’re looking. 

P.S. Makers Festival voting is open! Vote for your favorite product here to determine this year’s winners. 

In this week’s edition of Product Hunt Radio, we talked to Descript founder and CEO Andrew Mason about the right time to pivot ideas, scaling a company and personal development as a leader.

We’ll be back next week with another special guest, so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. 😸