This is sort of silly. You can put your start-up anywhere in San Francisco and be reasonably close to the start-up community. The only real benefit to being in

This is sort of silly. You can put your start-up anywhere in San Francisco and be reasonably close to the start-up community. The only real benefit to being in SOMA that I see is that it's easier to stumble to events straight after work like SFBeta, New Tech, or any of the various tech parties that happen within 3 blocks of Moscone (including but not limited to conference related parties). Having lived and worked at 3rd & Folsom for the past year and a half, I've become somewhat tired of spending so much time around the start-up community. All restaurants within 3 blocks of my apartment are filled with people talking about Twitter, constantly. A cool start-up would get office space in the Outer Richmond so you can hike around Land's End every day before you start working, or maybe up in Nob Hill so you're essentially forcing your employees to use public transit some part of the day, giving them that 15 minutes of zen before work.