Not to get completely off the OP, but I would be interested to hear your reasons for not thinking Reno would be good for a startup founder and specifically how Las Vegas would be different.
I don't disagree with you, just looking for an outside perspective. I've lived in both Reno and Las Vegas and have been working to build up the Reno startup community through Reno Collective coworking, Ignite Reno, WordCamp, Hack4Reno, etc. We've pulled off a lot of things and seen a lot of growth in the last few years but we know there is still a long way to go.
Either would be fine; Reno is closer to SF by car. Las Vegas has a bigger stock of houses (cheap), and a better airport -- being able to fly non-stop to basically anywhere is a big plus for b2b. Also, conferences happen in Vegas, so having a house there to use just for conferences and frontsight trips would make some sense. Las Vegas is a much bigger city, so all the other infrastructure is more likely to exist. I prefer the environment around Reno (well, the Tahoe area), and I hate Clark County laws vs. everywhere else in NV.
Neither one is ideal now, and neither has an "anchor tech company". Zappos isn't really enough of a tech company to be that. Hsieh's thing might be able to accomplish that, though. Having a pool of people familiar with startups to hire from would be great, but realistically you'd be recruiting people to relocate in either case.
I don't disagree with you, just looking for an outside perspective. I've lived in both Reno and Las Vegas and have been working to build up the Reno startup community through Reno Collective coworking, Ignite Reno, WordCamp, Hack4Reno, etc. We've pulled off a lot of things and seen a lot of growth in the last few years but we know there is still a long way to go.