Musings with Fred Boos, co-founder of RocketBux into what it takes to work, live and play in the BendTech community, by Michael Curry. 

Bottom line: “It’s almost an entrepreneurial effort just to move here,” Fred remarked.  “People come here without a plan and just figure it out as it comes.” Obviously, some are more successful than others, and those that do make it? Fred and I are both in agreement that they have “impressive gene pool.”

 last week I received an email reminder about the Free PC Day at Bend Recycling event which I promptly forwarded to everyone I knew had a few old clunkers lying around. I was surprised at one of the responses which started out “I’ve moved from Bend…” because of the lack of work. Darn it! We lost another member of our fledgling technology community. You will be missed my friend –hope it goes better for you in the new location.

This unfortunate turn of events illustrates the reality that it takes a combination of luck, determination and good business sense to pull off living in Bend as a technology worker. As I have noted before, ours is a tough profession with many challenges, but lack of well paying work is unusual except in Bend. Many who live here telecommute or have portable jobs they can take anywhere. But I want to explore what it takes to move here, start a business and be successful.

I recently asked a client if her customer base was Central Oregon and her reply was “no, we would starve if we just depended on local business.” For many tech workers, the balance seems to require a combination of both local and outside clients to pull off the Bend lifestyle. RocketBux is no different, and Fred often travels to the Big City on business. “The world is shrinking” he said. “A few months back I was in Manhattan the day after a 5 hour mountain bike ride near Sisters. It all seemed so surreal, kind of a dual life - mountain guy in dirty bike shorts transformed into city guy in suit, tie and raincoat within 20 hours.”

Although RocketBux was not the chosen as the finalist to receive the BVC $150K investment fund, we here at BendTech are pulling for them, and we remain impressed by his company and all of you that make it happen here in Bend.