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Startup activity did in fact not emerge in SF. Silicon Valley was traditionally the Santa Clara valley area (roughly, San Jose/Los Gatos to Palo Alto/Menlo Park

by jjav 7y ago

Startup activity did in fact not emerge in SF. Silicon Valley was traditionally the Santa Clara valley area (roughly, San Jose/Los Gatos to Palo Alto/Menlo Park). There were no tech jobs in SF (outliers aside, of course), it was a hippy city an hour north of Silicon Valley. It it only during the present decade that startup activity has appeared in force in SF, away from Silicon Valley. Due largely (I believe) to the tax breaks SF created in 2011 to encourage that.

beamatronic 7y ago
South of Market was cheap, starting in the early 1990s. Startups back then liked cheap.
- nostrademons 7y ago
  The center of Silicon Valley oscillates between SF and SJ on a roughly 10-year cycle, corresponding to major technology generations (and loosely, to bubble/build cycles). It was around Redwood City in the early 1970s (Ampex, Oracle), moved to Palo Alto and Cupertino for the PC/workstation era in the late 70s (Sun, Cisco, Apple, Seagate) down as far as San Jose and even Scotts Valley during the 80s (Adobe, Memorex, Borland), started moving north to Mountain View in the early 90s (SGI, Netscape), moved back to SF for the dot-com boom, moved back south to Palo Alto and Mountain View in the late 90s (Yahoo, Paypal, Google, Facebook, YCombinator), then moved back to SF starting in 2006 and significantly accelerating in 2011 (Reddit, AirBnB, Stripe, Twitter, Zynga, Medium, etc.) It's still in SF, though it remains to be seen where the next technology generation will take hold or if it'll even be in the Bay Area.
  - rficcaglia 7y ago
    I see a lot of building in downtown RWC and San Carlos. Maybe won’t be the center, but definitely a significant uptick.
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    You're comparing Medium to Adobe. Wow.
muzz 7y ago
Shuttle busses allowed techies to live in SF and work in places like Google, Facebook, etc. Prior to shuttles, it was a huge pain to do the commute. As they left big tech companies, they faced the choice of doing the commute again, or joining/starting companies in SF. I think this is an underrated factor.

by jjav 7y ago

beamatronic 7y ago

South of Market was cheap, starting in the early 1990s. Startups back then liked cheap.

nostrademons 7y ago
The center of Silicon Valley oscillates between SF and SJ on a roughly 10-year cycle, corresponding to major technology generations (and loosely, to bubble/build cycles). It was around Redwood City in the early 1970s (Ampex, Oracle), moved to Palo Alto and Cupertino for the PC/workstation era in the late 70s (Sun, Cisco, Apple, Seagate) down as far as San Jose and even Scotts Valley during the 80s (Adobe, Memorex, Borland), started moving north to Mountain View in the early 90s (SGI, Netscape), moved back to SF for the dot-com boom, moved back south to Palo Alto and Mountain View in the late 90s (Yahoo, Paypal, Google, Facebook, YCombinator), then moved back to SF starting in 2006 and significantly accelerating in 2011 (Reddit, AirBnB, Stripe, Twitter, Zynga, Medium, etc.) It's still in SF, though it remains to be seen where the next technology generation will take hold or if it'll even be in the Bay Area.
- rficcaglia 7y ago
  I see a lot of building in downtown RWC and San Carlos. Maybe won’t be the center, but definitely a significant uptick.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  You're comparing Medium to Adobe. Wow.

muzz 7y ago

Shuttle busses allowed techies to live in SF and work in places like Google, Facebook, etc. Prior to shuttles, it was a huge pain to do the commute. As they left big tech companies, they faced the choice of doing the commute again, or joining/starting companies in SF. I think this is an underrated factor.