We Messed with Texas

It was the Golden State against the Lone Star State on Thursday night at the Commonwealth Club, as Bay Area Council President and CEO Jim Wunderman took part in a panel discussion on the causes and impacts of two Bay Area Fortune 500 companies recently relocating to Texas. The conversation, hosted by CoreNet’s Northern California chapter, featured Barry Broome of Greater Sacramento Economic Council and Jessica Here of Dallas Regional Chamber and was moderated by San Francisco Business Times reporter Mark Calvey.

While the representative from Texas touted her region’s large talent pool and low cost of doing business, Wunderman highlighted the Bay Area’s concentration of top universities, venture capital, and tech unicorns as reasons why the region’s economy will remain strong for years to come. Broome emphasized Sacramento as an ideal location for growing companies because of its “talent advantage” with its proximity to a highly educated workforce; within a hundred miles of Sacramento there are more undergraduate degrees conferred each year than Denver, Portland, Seattle and Austin. Wunderman closed the event by remarking that the Bay Area is globally unique in its ability to embrace diversity, innovation, and risk—and the Bay Area emerged from this debate ahead of its competition from Texas.