Comment by nostrademons

California's tech industry works because there is a long-established tradition of lawbreaking in California. We pass all these regulations, and then ignore them. Sometimes the more enlightened legislators put in explicit carve-outs for businesses of less than 50 employees or a $B in revenue, so that startups don't have to actually break the law, they can just ignore it. But they're going to ignore it anyway, so the carve outs really serve the law's benefit rather than the startup.

In practice, the way California tech startups work is

  1) Break *all* the laws.
  2) Get customers
  3) Raise capital
  4) Profit!
  5) Hire lawyers to bring the company into compliance with the laws.
  6) Hire lobbyists to bring the laws into compliance with the company.
  7) Try to prevent your employees from doing the same thing you did.

Steps #5-6 aren't limited to a particular state. At that point, you have buckets of money anyway, so you contort your company structure and product into a configuration that is legal in as many jurisdictions as possible, including internationally.