Friday, Oct. 4, 2024 | 2 a.m.
Teddy Liaw has for years been pitching tech entrepreneurs on moving their businesses to Nevada, and was at it again Thursday while hosting the third annual Vegas Tech Summit in a luxury Summerlin home.
Las Vegas isn’t traditionally a tech hub, but Liaw and the event’s other speakers have a simple argument in contrast with the industry’s traditional California home: Nevada has no income tax, a growing economy with room to expand, and a government hungry to work with private enterprise.
A California transplant himself, Liaw, founder of NexRep, a work-from-home call center platform, is starting to see his work come to fruition.
“Obviously, moving oneself — their families, their business — is a multiyear process. But the fact is, the seeds are being planted and now the seeds are growing and flourishing,” Liaw said.
The state’s economic advantages extend to its housing market, said Alex Hancock, the senior vice president of national sales and leasing for Howard Hughes Corp. The average rent in San Francisco, where Liaw called home before relocating to Las Vegas, is $2,884 a month, according to Apartments.com. In Las Vegas, it’s $1,000 cheaper.
Hancock said he’d seen “a few tenants within our portfolio” that expressed interest in coming to Las Vegas if they hadn’t moved already.
Liaw said the lower cost of living was especially important for acquiring talent while competing with California’s tech giants.
“That 13 to 15% tax saving absolutely is the difference (in) that quality of life you get,” Liaw said. “At $150,000 in San Francisco you’re getting a studio, maybe a one-bedroom apartment. Here, you’re getting a 3,000-square-foot house.”
He said Las Vegas’ burgeoning tech industry was also about diversifying the state’s economy, making it more resilient to disruptions like the global pandemic.
Las Vegas’ recent and ongoing push for professional sports was among the first dominoes to fall in expanding the Southern Nevada economy, Hancock said.
Since 2016, Las Vegas has added the NHL’s Golden Knights and NFL’s Raiders housed in T-Mobile Arena and Allegiant Stadium, respectively. Major League Baseball’s Athletics played their last game in Oakland on Sept. 26 and are expected to make their Las Vegas debut in 2028.
“It ushered in a new era of understanding that Las Vegas is not just a gambling town, even though we should embrace our roots,” Raiders President Sandra Douglass Morgan said of her team’s 65,000-seat stadium.
When Douglass Morgan goes to NFL ownership meetings, she and Raiders owner Mark Davis are consistently told that Las Vegas’ 2024 Super Bowl was the best people had seen, the team president added.
“That’s because up and down the Strip, through downtown, through —obviously — the other suburban areas, the business community has been able to show time and time again that it’s able to come together when it’s for the benefit of Southern Nevada,” she said.
Thursday’s event drew a high-profile crowd including Nan Wang, founder of fantasy sports app Sleeper, Olympic speedskater-turned-investor Apolo Ohno and Evite CEO David Yeom. Along with other attendees, Nevada State Treasurer Zach Conine emphasized the government’s accessibility as a selling point.
“Nevada is here to be flexible for what you need,” Conine said. “You don’t need to talk to 17 people and hope to get a meeting. You can just call me or … call the governor, because we are a small state and we are open for business.”
Kent Yoshimura — who co-founded Neuro, which makes caffeinated gum packed with supplements — has seen that openness firsthand.
Since his business came to Las Vegas in 2022, he said he’s met with Congresswoman Susie Lee and Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford.
“Imagine being in New York,” Yoshimura said. “It’ll be impossible to meet with the attorney general there unless you’re a Facebook or something.”
Despite the excitement and praise for Las Vegas’ tech future, Liaw does keep his outlook in perspective.
“Nevada really is going to boom as the next tech hub. Are we going to supplant Silicon Valley? Absolutely not,” he said. “But we’re going to be a great alternate destination for people that want to start building new companies.”
[email protected] / 702-990-8923 / @Kyle_Chouinard
