If you’re gonna go, be prepared
I am absolutely fascinated with the concept behind Teleport, a way cool app that puts you in the driver’s seat of where you want to live based on your preferences for the job market, startup scene, housing, social life and much, much more.
I’m not sure if a similar app exists, although it wouldn’t surprise me. Certainly all I need to do if I want to know how it is to live in Austin, Texas is Google the location and I’ll have gosh-knows-how-many links to investigate. Teleport, however, puts it all under one roof.
Smart information
The site is geared toward startups, but it offers a lot of applicable information for just about anyone sniffing out a new city. You simply click on the city, and you’ll get a world of demographic data including but not limited to:
- The average cost of housing, including median rent
- Affordability of healthcare
- Taxation information
- How much it costs to eat out
It’s a big world out there
I think what impresses me the most about Teleport is that it allows me to think big. I mean like the “Whole Wide World” big. If I’m going to move, it’s going to be somewhere I can shake things up or somewhere that’ll shake me up! Based on my preferences (and you can reset your preferences whenever you like) I was given a list of cities worldwide from Singapore to Jacksonville, Beijing to Sofia, Bulgaria and I was easily able to see how I can live based on my current earnings (assuming I can still earn a similar salary).
Right now the site is limited to 100 cities but according to co-founder and CEO Sten Tamkivi, more locations are being added all the time.
“We actually built a custom index of 60 most “startup-friendly cities” (open economies, availability of talent and capital, etc) around the world, and then augmented it to get decent coverage of smaller capitals in European Union, and some key hubs in Asia. In the US, for example, this got us to Boulder, CO and Austin, TX quicker than their population would suggest. This got us to the first 100 cities. And from there we currently add cities based on user pull, where people searching want us to go. We have added 2 batches of 5 to date. Voting is open in our mobile app, and will be on the web soon too.”
Pack your bags
The world has become a much more linear place in the last decade alone. There’s nothing stopping us (except maybe a travel visa) from packing a bag and boarding the next plane flying. Places we’ve always dreamed of are within our grasp more than ever before.
And apps like Teleport will help us get there.
