10 ms·

That's ok. When Airbnb, Square, and Stripe IPO in 12-36 months, all of the people currently flooding into SF to work for them will surely be able to sell their

That's ok. When Airbnb, Square, and Stripe IPO in 12-36 months, all of the people currently flooding into SF to work for them will surely be able to sell their pre-IPO shares to ... Well, I don't know, honestly. I doubt that employee #1000 at Square would even be able to pay the down payment on a SF condo with their earnings. Also, just FYI: Seattle isn't that much cheaper than SF, the people are way meaner, traffic is awful, and the weather really sucks. So I highly recommend against moving up here. --- edit: Since people are apparently missing the joke, I've lived in Seattle for 12 years, consider it home, and can't imagine living anywhere else.

washedup 11y ago
Median rent for a 1-bedroom in Seattle is $1,615, compared to $2,800 in SF (from Rent Jungle)
- Nicholas_C 11y ago
  Wow, Seattle actually doesn't seem that much more expensive compared to the $1,263 average 1br in Dallas. But SF... Holy shit. And I'm actually seeing $2,965 on Rent Jungle for SF right now.
  - dntrkv 11y ago
    The crazy thing is that it will be very hard to find a decent 1 bedroom for even that price, realistically you are looking at $3.5k to $4k.
    - bcbrown 11y ago
      That's only true if you need to live in new construction. My previous apartment was an old crappy 2BR on Capitol Hill, with Cascade views, from 2012-2014, for $1500. Currently I'm paying $2200 for a 2BR house with a nice yard in the Central District. If anyone wants to rent a nice 3BR house north of the UW for $3-4K, email me, I know of one for rent.
      - eitally 11y ago
        He was talking about SF. :)
- temuze 11y ago
  $2,961 in Brooklyn and $3,361 in Manhattan. Ouch. Source: http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2015/05/14/rents_rise_across_new_york_city_but_brooklyns_set_a_record.php http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2015/05/14/rents_rise_across_n...
dataker 11y ago
Assuming they'll IPO is a pretty bold statement.
- aaronbrethorst 11y ago
  Considering that any of the above might not makes the economics for employee #1000 that much worse.
  - WalterSear 11y ago
    The economics of equity for employees in general is out of line with most people's expectations. You can expect pre-Series A shares to drop by an order of magnitude in ownership proportion between issue and IPO. Since this can take 5-10 years, the equity carrot is nothing more than a bonus unless the company unicorns. It's less than one could probably make in the same time at an established company. From a compensation standpoint, there's no point being an employee at a startup that isn't aiming at a billion dollar+ exit: there just won't be enough money to go round unless it does.
vessenes 11y ago
Seattle is way, way cheaper, the people seem nice to me, and we've had like 9 months of sun, so much so that we were declared officially in drought. Just saying. Might not be Seattle that's the problem. As to traffic, I commute via boat, which is rad, since there are dolphins and orcas sometimes. Seriously!
- seanmcdirmid 11y ago
  Bainbridge Island is cheating :) Seattle is still quite affordable, especially where startups tend to have their offices (in boring east side office parks).
  - WalterSear 11y ago
    Bainbridge island, where green bell peppers are $4 each.
    - balls187 11y ago
      Bainbridge Island where Orange is greater than Green.
- yid 11y ago
  Not to mention the lack of state income tax...
- aaronbrethorst 11y ago
  ssh! You're not supposed to tell!
  - vessenes 11y ago
    Time honored trope for PNW residents: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keep_the_Bastards_Out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keep_the_Bastards_Out Every few years these Californians muck everything up with their SF equity turned into bidding wars, and their fancy cars and stuff.
kcorbitt 11y ago
As a Seattle resident born and raised, and having spent a fair amount of time in other parts of the world, I take issue with your characterization of the people as "way meaner." ;) The traffic is terrible though; I wouldn't want to commute into the city from anywhere outside of it. And the weather... well, let's just call it an acquired taste. :)
vertis 11y ago
Visited Seattle for the first time yesterday (from Australia). I have to say that unless you start paying me off I'm going to start promoting it. The people were super friendly. The weather was great (two days of sunny blue skies). The food was great. Even the roads were easy to deal with I do take bitcoin.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- aianus 11y ago
  > The weather was great (two days of sunny blue skies). Seattle from October through January is nothing like this. I literally didn't see the sun for over 20 days straight at one point (it's foggy and rainy non-stop during the winter).
  - mikestew 11y ago
    20 days, huh? Must have been a mild winter. Smart-assery aside, yeah, Seattle has awesome summers, albeit mighty short some years. November comes, you better head down to the NorthFace outlet and get a GoreTex jacket or two.
  - meatysnapper 11y ago
    That's nothing. In 1998 (I'm pretty sure) Seattle had 96 days of light drizzle with nary a ray of sunshine. The suicide rate went up massively, and I decided to move to CA as soon as I had the means.
    - jdp23 11y ago
      I remember that winter well. I was founder-CTO of a Silicon Valley-based startup, and we were working on a big deal with Microsoft. After they hired away the first two people we put on the project, I stepped in, and spent several weeks a month up in the Seattle area. I still remember telling the board, "the only way they'll be able to hire me is to buy the company!" and we all had a good laugh. Which is of course what happened -- they decided they wanted the technology and the engineering team (including me) and after some negotation got to a price that worked for everybody. Moving up to Redmond was part of the deal. At the celebration party, people gave me various presents -- including a scuba mask, flippers, rubbers, several umbrellas... And yeah, everything they say about the winters here is true. So please please please don't move here :)
jusben1369 11y ago
Everybody is running with your Seattle humor but your comment on IPO'ing is worth discussing. 1) The reason a startup is appealing is because you're supposed to make a great low 6 or even 7 figure sum once your company goes public. 2) To achieve success you're supposed to work intensely hard and smart (@pmarca) for a short period of time (3 - 7 years) and then if you've picked successfully you'll create a really nice nest egg for yourself while you're peers who graduated will only be up to around $50K in their contributing 401K's. 3) Based on the size of that exit you are free to go somewhere else and enjoy luxury or double down in the Bay Area but this time with a little more money to get a better apartment or even buy something in the burbs. So the point is looking at just Income isn't helpful. One would hope your stock is appreciating in value at an equivalent or greater pace than your income.
- aaronbrethorst 11y ago
  > One would hope your stock is appreciating in value at an equivalent or greater pace than your income One would, but given the stock performance of GRPN or ZNGA, or more recently HDP and BOX, I'd be leery of this. Betting that you happen to pick the unicorn that's gonna IPO is a tall order. Betting that you happen to pick the IPO'ing unicorn that isn't going to fall apart post-IPO seems like too much to ask for.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- nulltype 11y ago
  One would hope.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > One would hope your stock is appreciating in value at an equivalent or greater pace than your income. OTOH, hope is not the same thing as reality. Some startups will exit successfully and yield really big payouts. Some startups will have modest exists, and equity will have some additional value, but nothing to write home about. And some startups will fail. If you are a capital investor in lots of startups, the small share where the first occurs have a good chance of being enough to make the average return good. But if you are a 20-something that's putting 3-7 years of labor into each swing at the startup piñata...
aianus 11y ago
Seattle is the worst place I've ever lived in including multiple third world countries. The weather really, really, really sucks to the point where it ruins your whole life.
rconti 11y ago
May be intended to be joke, but the weather is atrocious, and the traffic is worse than the Bay Area (but probably not worse than LA). People are nice though! Source: Lived there 22 years, moved to the Bay Area a dozen years ago, bought a house here, love it. Also, nobody complains about all the "outsiders" driving up housing costs here, whereas in the Northwest, blaming outsiders has been a mantra for decades.
- mratzloff 11y ago
  Seattle has the third-worst traffic in the country[1], after Los Angeles[2] and San Francisco[3]. New York is #8 by comparison.[4] [1] http://d2dtl5nnlpfr0r.cloudfront.net/tti.tamu.edu/documents/ums/congestion-data/seattle.pdf http://d2dtl5nnlpfr0r.cloudfront.net/tti.tamu.edu/documents/... [2] http://d2dtl5nnlpfr0r.cloudfront.net/tti.tamu.edu/documents/ums/congestion-data/los-angeles.pdf http://d2dtl5nnlpfr0r.cloudfront.net/tti.tamu.edu/documents/... [3] http://d2dtl5nnlpfr0r.cloudfront.net/tti.tamu.edu/documents/ums/congestion-data/san-francisco.pdf http://d2dtl5nnlpfr0r.cloudfront.net/tti.tamu.edu/documents/... [4] http://d2dtl5nnlpfr0r.cloudfront.net/tti.tamu.edu/documents/ums/congestion-data/new-york-city.pdf http://d2dtl5nnlpfr0r.cloudfront.net/tti.tamu.edu/documents/...
geebee 11y ago
Oh, I know about the "joke". There may be an uglier side to it than some people want to admit, though. http://www.washington.edu/uwired/outreach/cspn/Website/Classroom%20Materials/Pacific%20Northwest%20History/Lessons/Lesson%201/1.html http://www.washington.edu/uwired/outreach/cspn/Website/Class...
rokhayakebe 11y ago
How much does a decent house or decent condo cost in an nice (not very nice) neighborhood in SF? I can look at Zillow but I do not know which areas are good vs. bad.
- defen 11y ago
  Median condo price (including 1-bedroom and studios) is $1.1 million This is the cheapest home available in SF, for $288,000, in the worst neighborhood http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2015/05/27/at_288k_san_franciscos_cheapest_house_needs_a_bit_of_work.php http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2015/05/27/at_288k_san_francis...

washedup 11y ago

Median rent for a 1-bedroom in Seattle is $1,615, compared to $2,800 in SF (from Rent Jungle)

Nicholas_C 11y ago
Wow, Seattle actually doesn't seem that much more expensive compared to the $1,263 average 1br in Dallas. But SF... Holy shit. And I'm actually seeing $2,965 on Rent Jungle for SF right now.
- dntrkv 11y ago
  The crazy thing is that it will be very hard to find a decent 1 bedroom for even that price, realistically you are looking at $3.5k to $4k.
  - bcbrown 11y ago
    That's only true if you need to live in new construction. My previous apartment was an old crappy 2BR on Capitol Hill, with Cascade views, from 2012-2014, for $1500. Currently I'm paying $2200 for a 2BR house with a nice yard in the Central District. If anyone wants to rent a nice 3BR house north of the UW for $3-4K, email me, I know of one for rent.
    - eitally 11y ago
      He was talking about SF. :)
temuze 11y ago
$2,961 in Brooklyn and $3,361 in Manhattan. Ouch. Source: http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2015/05/14/rents_rise_across_new_york_city_but_brooklyns_set_a_record.php http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2015/05/14/rents_rise_across_n...

dataker 11y ago

Assuming they'll IPO is a pretty bold statement.

aaronbrethorst 11y ago
Considering that any of the above might not makes the economics for employee #1000 that much worse.
- WalterSear 11y ago
  The economics of equity for employees in general is out of line with most people's expectations. You can expect pre-Series A shares to drop by an order of magnitude in ownership proportion between issue and IPO. Since this can take 5-10 years, the equity carrot is nothing more than a bonus unless the company unicorns. It's less than one could probably make in the same time at an established company. From a compensation standpoint, there's no point being an employee at a startup that isn't aiming at a billion dollar+ exit: there just won't be enough money to go round unless it does.

vessenes 11y ago

Seattle is way, way cheaper, the people seem nice to me, and we've had like 9 months of sun, so much so that we were declared officially in drought. Just saying. Might not be Seattle that's the problem. As to traffic, I commute via boat, which is rad, since there are dolphins and orcas sometimes. Seriously!

seanmcdirmid 11y ago
Bainbridge Island is cheating :) Seattle is still quite affordable, especially where startups tend to have their offices (in boring east side office parks).
- WalterSear 11y ago
  Bainbridge island, where green bell peppers are $4 each.
  - balls187 11y ago
    Bainbridge Island where Orange is greater than Green.
yid 11y ago
Not to mention the lack of state income tax...
aaronbrethorst 11y ago
ssh! You're not supposed to tell!
- vessenes 11y ago
  Time honored trope for PNW residents: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keep_the_Bastards_Out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keep_the_Bastards_Out Every few years these Californians muck everything up with their SF equity turned into bidding wars, and their fancy cars and stuff.

kcorbitt 11y ago

As a Seattle resident born and raised, and having spent a fair amount of time in other parts of the world, I take issue with your characterization of the people as "way meaner." ;) The traffic is terrible though; I wouldn't want to commute into the city from anywhere outside of it. And the weather... well, let's just call it an acquired taste. :)

vertis 11y ago

Visited Seattle for the first time yesterday (from Australia). I have to say that unless you start paying me off I'm going to start promoting it. The people were super friendly. The weather was great (two days of sunny blue skies). The food was great. Even the roads were easy to deal with I do take bitcoin.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
aianus 11y ago
> The weather was great (two days of sunny blue skies). Seattle from October through January is nothing like this. I literally didn't see the sun for over 20 days straight at one point (it's foggy and rainy non-stop during the winter).
- mikestew 11y ago
  20 days, huh? Must have been a mild winter. Smart-assery aside, yeah, Seattle has awesome summers, albeit mighty short some years. November comes, you better head down to the NorthFace outlet and get a GoreTex jacket or two.
- meatysnapper 11y ago
  That's nothing. In 1998 (I'm pretty sure) Seattle had 96 days of light drizzle with nary a ray of sunshine. The suicide rate went up massively, and I decided to move to CA as soon as I had the means.
  - jdp23 11y ago
    I remember that winter well. I was founder-CTO of a Silicon Valley-based startup, and we were working on a big deal with Microsoft. After they hired away the first two people we put on the project, I stepped in, and spent several weeks a month up in the Seattle area. I still remember telling the board, "the only way they'll be able to hire me is to buy the company!" and we all had a good laugh. Which is of course what happened -- they decided they wanted the technology and the engineering team (including me) and after some negotation got to a price that worked for everybody. Moving up to Redmond was part of the deal. At the celebration party, people gave me various presents -- including a scuba mask, flippers, rubbers, several umbrellas... And yeah, everything they say about the winters here is true. So please please please don't move here :)

jusben1369 11y ago

Everybody is running with your Seattle humor but your comment on IPO'ing is worth discussing. 1) The reason a startup is appealing is because you're supposed to make a great low 6 or even 7 figure sum once your company goes public. 2) To achieve success you're supposed to work intensely hard and smart (@pmarca) for a short period of time (3 - 7 years) and then if you've picked successfully you'll create a really nice nest egg for yourself while you're peers who graduated will only be up to around $50K in their contributing 401K's. 3) Based on the size of that exit you are free to go somewhere else and enjoy luxury or double down in the Bay Area but this time with a little more money to get a better apartment or even buy something in the burbs. So the point is looking at just Income isn't helpful. One would hope your stock is appreciating in value at an equivalent or greater pace than your income.

aaronbrethorst 11y ago
> One would hope your stock is appreciating in value at an equivalent or greater pace than your income One would, but given the stock performance of GRPN or ZNGA, or more recently HDP and BOX, I'd be leery of this. Betting that you happen to pick the unicorn that's gonna IPO is a tall order. Betting that you happen to pick the IPO'ing unicorn that isn't going to fall apart post-IPO seems like too much to ask for.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
nulltype 11y ago
One would hope.
dragonwriter 11y ago
> One would hope your stock is appreciating in value at an equivalent or greater pace than your income. OTOH, hope is not the same thing as reality. Some startups will exit successfully and yield really big payouts. Some startups will have modest exists, and equity will have some additional value, but nothing to write home about. And some startups will fail. If you are a capital investor in lots of startups, the small share where the first occurs have a good chance of being enough to make the average return good. But if you are a 20-something that's putting 3-7 years of labor into each swing at the startup piñata...

aianus 11y ago

Seattle is the worst place I've ever lived in including multiple third world countries. The weather really, really, really sucks to the point where it ruins your whole life.

rconti 11y ago

May be intended to be joke, but the weather is atrocious, and the traffic is worse than the Bay Area (but probably not worse than LA). People are nice though! Source: Lived there 22 years, moved to the Bay Area a dozen years ago, bought a house here, love it. Also, nobody complains about all the "outsiders" driving up housing costs here, whereas in the Northwest, blaming outsiders has been a mantra for decades.

mratzloff 11y ago
Seattle has the third-worst traffic in the country[1], after Los Angeles[2] and San Francisco[3]. New York is #8 by comparison.[4] [1] http://d2dtl5nnlpfr0r.cloudfront.net/tti.tamu.edu/documents/ums/congestion-data/seattle.pdf http://d2dtl5nnlpfr0r.cloudfront.net/tti.tamu.edu/documents/... [2] http://d2dtl5nnlpfr0r.cloudfront.net/tti.tamu.edu/documents/ums/congestion-data/los-angeles.pdf http://d2dtl5nnlpfr0r.cloudfront.net/tti.tamu.edu/documents/... [3] http://d2dtl5nnlpfr0r.cloudfront.net/tti.tamu.edu/documents/ums/congestion-data/san-francisco.pdf http://d2dtl5nnlpfr0r.cloudfront.net/tti.tamu.edu/documents/... [4] http://d2dtl5nnlpfr0r.cloudfront.net/tti.tamu.edu/documents/ums/congestion-data/new-york-city.pdf http://d2dtl5nnlpfr0r.cloudfront.net/tti.tamu.edu/documents/...

geebee 11y ago

Oh, I know about the "joke". There may be an uglier side to it than some people want to admit, though. http://www.washington.edu/uwired/outreach/cspn/Website/Classroom%20Materials/Pacific%20Northwest%20History/Lessons/Lesson%201/1.html http://www.washington.edu/uwired/outreach/cspn/Website/Class...

rokhayakebe 11y ago

How much does a decent house or decent condo cost in an nice (not very nice) neighborhood in SF? I can look at Zillow but I do not know which areas are good vs. bad.

defen 11y ago
Median condo price (including 1-bedroom and studios) is $1.1 million This is the cheapest home available in SF, for $288,000, in the worst neighborhood http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2015/05/27/at_288k_san_franciscos_cheapest_house_needs_a_bit_of_work.php http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2015/05/27/at_288k_san_francis...