6 ms·

I'm not from the Bay Area so I'm not aware, how is it dying?

vadym909 8y ago
not the op- but I think what he's implying is that all the good engineers are in golden handcuffs with the FANG or unicorn startups making $300k. In the old days you could match the base salary and say my stock is better. Today its harder when MSFT is 3x or Netflix has 5x in the last few years. Your startup stock of 100K with 10% probability of becoming worth 10x in a few years just doesn't sound attractive enough to a good engineer. If all the good engineers are taken, it sucks the life out of other startups.
- nojvek 8y ago
  It’s not that all the good engineers are taken. It’s that the good engineers are doing mindless ad blasting to make a bigger buck. There’s an opportunity cost of inventing things that actually make people’s lives considerably better. The valley was the place where this would happen, now that culture and spirit is slowly dying. Mostly because you can’t take those kinds of risks. Just the living expensive would kill you. VC money needs a quick buck so that kills those ideas in their infancy too. Innovation is hard!
  - propman 8y ago
    Hit the nail on the head right here. You just can’t take the risks anymore. Everything is too expensive and it isn’t worth it anymore when Facebook dangles such a fat pay check in front of you. Entrepreneurship and free thinking has turned into copycat, quick bucks how to make quick money and complete group think. This is especially true in the sf start up scene
    - oculusthrift 8y ago
      Do you have a solution? I can’t thjnk of one. not like you can force fb to pay less.
      - nojvek 8y ago
        BUILD . MORE . HOUSING
godzillabrennus 8y ago
Costs of housing and other living expenses have increased to the point that Manhattan is cheaper.
nostrademons 8y ago
(Not OP, but I'm currently founding a startup in the Bay Area.) I don't have the perception that the Bay Area startup scene is dying, but it's perhaps true that the Bay Area startup scene is dying. Basically, you can't raise a $3M seed round on "I went to (Stanford|Ivy League|other top college) and have an idea for a mobile app" anymore, nor can you raise follow-on rounds off anything but revenue growth. That means that the days where a couple 20-somethings could found a company, hire 10 people, and code by day while partying late into the night are gone. Good riddance, IMHO. The startup scene is still healthy, but is very different demographically. Some observations: Average founders skew older - it's more 30- and 40-somethings that worked for a big tech company and cashed out a million or so in stock options, or had a previous startup exit. (The exception is crypto, which is largely financed through ICO now.) B2B is ascendant over B2C, and many startups are financing the company with pre-sales from paying customers. Team sizes are smaller, and many companies are using outsourced labor where they either open an office abroad for engineering, or they use Upwork etc. to find contractors. Startups in general have gotten cheaper and leaner and are more focused on doing the work rather than living the dream.
- htormey 8y ago
  This is pretty on point. I work as a consultant in the Bay Area with a number of startups and I see these trends. I know several startups doing Berlin offices. Also, contracting work seems pretty easy to come by over here.
- anothergoogler 8y ago
  That's quite a positive take. When I see "lean" startups offshoring/using Upwork to build their offerings, I think the magic has left the bay and that people are trying to squeeze water from rocks. Partying all night might make investors and parents of 2.5 children wince, but that was part of what made unexpected, innovative software possible. It's ominous that startups are forced to outsource because cost of living has priced them out of local talent. When I look at the bay now, I see a bunch of FANG drones measuring their RSU dicks. People caring more about buying a home and whining about NIMBYs than making cool shit with cool tech. Of course most startups are stodgy B2B and not moon shot B2C, you can't build B2C when your experience is so separate from a normal person's. But another JIRA/GitHub/Slack integration? Ooh, that's the good stuff we can relate to. Maybe the bay got old, but I don't believe that when I see fresh grads falling over themselves to work at a FANG. Whatever happened, there's not much serendipity left. There will be a tipping point where enough cool stuff is coming out of Detroit/Atlanta/wherever that an investor would be a fool to fixate on the bay.

not the op- but I think what he's implying is that all the good engineers are in golden handcuffs with the FANG or unicorn startups making $300k. In the old days you could match the base salary and say my stock is better. Today its harder when MSFT is 3x or Netflix has 5x in the last few years. Your startup stock of 100K with 10% probability of becoming worth 10x in a few years just doesn't sound attractive enough to a good engineer. If all the good engineers are taken, it sucks the life out of other startups.

nojvek 8y ago
It’s not that all the good engineers are taken. It’s that the good engineers are doing mindless ad blasting to make a bigger buck. There’s an opportunity cost of inventing things that actually make people’s lives considerably better. The valley was the place where this would happen, now that culture and spirit is slowly dying. Mostly because you can’t take those kinds of risks. Just the living expensive would kill you. VC money needs a quick buck so that kills those ideas in their infancy too. Innovation is hard!
- propman 8y ago
  Hit the nail on the head right here. You just can’t take the risks anymore. Everything is too expensive and it isn’t worth it anymore when Facebook dangles such a fat pay check in front of you. Entrepreneurship and free thinking has turned into copycat, quick bucks how to make quick money and complete group think. This is especially true in the sf start up scene
  - oculusthrift 8y ago
    Do you have a solution? I can’t thjnk of one. not like you can force fb to pay less.
    - nojvek 8y ago
      BUILD . MORE . HOUSING

godzillabrennus 8y ago

Costs of housing and other living expenses have increased to the point that Manhattan is cheaper.

nostrademons 8y ago

(Not OP, but I'm currently founding a startup in the Bay Area.) I don't have the perception that the Bay Area startup scene is dying, but it's perhaps true that the Bay Area startup scene is dying. Basically, you can't raise a $3M seed round on "I went to (Stanford|Ivy League|other top college) and have an idea for a mobile app" anymore, nor can you raise follow-on rounds off anything but revenue growth. That means that the days where a couple 20-somethings could found a company, hire 10 people, and code by day while partying late into the night are gone. Good riddance, IMHO. The startup scene is still healthy, but is very different demographically. Some observations: Average founders skew older - it's more 30- and 40-somethings that worked for a big tech company and cashed out a million or so in stock options, or had a previous startup exit. (The exception is crypto, which is largely financed through ICO now.) B2B is ascendant over B2C, and many startups are financing the company with pre-sales from paying customers. Team sizes are smaller, and many companies are using outsourced labor where they either open an office abroad for engineering, or they use Upwork etc. to find contractors. Startups in general have gotten cheaper and leaner and are more focused on doing the work rather than living the dream.

htormey 8y ago
This is pretty on point. I work as a consultant in the Bay Area with a number of startups and I see these trends. I know several startups doing Berlin offices. Also, contracting work seems pretty easy to come by over here.
anothergoogler 8y ago
That's quite a positive take. When I see "lean" startups offshoring/using Upwork to build their offerings, I think the magic has left the bay and that people are trying to squeeze water from rocks. Partying all night might make investors and parents of 2.5 children wince, but that was part of what made unexpected, innovative software possible. It's ominous that startups are forced to outsource because cost of living has priced them out of local talent. When I look at the bay now, I see a bunch of FANG drones measuring their RSU dicks. People caring more about buying a home and whining about NIMBYs than making cool shit with cool tech. Of course most startups are stodgy B2B and not moon shot B2C, you can't build B2C when your experience is so separate from a normal person's. But another JIRA/GitHub/Slack integration? Ooh, that's the good stuff we can relate to. Maybe the bay got old, but I don't believe that when I see fresh grads falling over themselves to work at a FANG. Whatever happened, there's not much serendipity left. There will be a tipping point where enough cool stuff is coming out of Detroit/Atlanta/wherever that an investor would be a fool to fixate on the bay.