13 ms·

Yes, this is just standard bureaucracy and it's Skip's fault, as people are saying. But the bigger point is that the SF government apparently places more weigh

Yes, this is just standard bureaucracy and it's Skip's fault, as people are saying. But the bigger point is that the SF government apparently places more weight on minor application mistakes than actual, historical "bad" behavior. That's why this is so comical. It only feeds fuel to the truth that rules should be bent and there really is no point in "moving slow" for startups. You won't be rewarded for it. Most tech entrepreneurs already know this: Airbnb and Uber proved this point long ago.

mstade 7y ago
> But the bigger point is that the SF government apparently places more weight on minor application mistakes than actual, historical "bad" behavior. This has been my experience with pretty much any bureaucracy, regardless of locale. E.g. when I incorporated my company, I had to send in the same application four times, each time paying an additional fee. Reason was I had minor, pointless really, mistakes in the application, a box I didn't realize had to be ticked, name in the date field and date in the name field, that sort of thing. The data entry people at the government agency could have easily resolved any mistakes with a phone call, but instead I get a letter in the mail a couple of weeks later, saying there's an error but not what the error is. So I have to call and ask, and of course they had no record of what the error was so we had to go over the application on the phone and find them. You'd think they'd tell me about the other errors then, but no, I had to do this four times. It took almost two months to get a simple form approved. I wish that was my only story of wasting time on bureaucracy, but there are plenty more where that came from.
- koheripbal 7y ago
  As a general rule that is particularily effective when dealing with government is that it is always easier to ask forgiveness than it is to ask permission. Government officials will always choose the easiest path forward - and that is almost always inaction.
- reaperducer 7y ago
  This has been my experience with pretty much any bureaucracy, regardless of locale. It doesn't have to be this way. I incorporated my first company in Chicago, and was stunned with how helpful the bureaucrats were. Yes, it was a little complex, especially in the years before "startups" were a thing, and you could do stuff online. But each department I had to work with had people who would sit me down at their desk and explain what they did, why I should care, and how to fill out the forms properly. Maybe the difference is that back then, you were expected to form a company in person, and not do everything online all by yourself and be an expert from day one. A massive thanks to the Illinois Department of Revenue people in the basement of the Thompson Center for all their openness and hand-holding. (In spite of all this, I still moved the company to another state a few years later because of Chicago + Illinois taxes and corruption.)
  - mikojan 7y ago
    This has been my experience in dealing with the German collection office even though all had already been moved to web and I never once met a real person. They would always send me nice letters explaining what exactly was wrong. Even did this in cases in which they themselves corrected the error on my behave. On the other hand, dealing with private bureaucracies such as internet providers has always been a major pain. Very unhelpful, not accommodating at all.
    - HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
      This. If all the ISP's died near me, I probably wouldn't shed a tear.
  - yebyen 7y ago
    Echo this sentiment from another Midwesterner, ex-pat former New York State resident. I moved to Indiana and have not had the experience of incorporating a business entity, but the experience I had at the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles has been one to make me question whether bureaucracies are really necessarily horrible all of the time. Starting with the experience of moving to the state, to contrast (Upstate) Western New York vs Indiana: My New York insurance provider determined that I was no longer residing in the state, so mailed me a letter of notice that my vehicle insurance was being cancelled. In truth this was the best thing that could have happened, because Indiana insurance is so much cheaper, and I got a deal through my new employer. I was dragging my feet on this because I did not know better about it, and knew it would be painful. So I went to get new insurance, and learned I would need to re-register my car... Visiting the Indiana BMV was like no other auto vehicle registration experience. They were able to take care of me same day, and with no long wait – I waited up to at most 15 minutes to the desk. I was not shuffled from one desk to another, we completed the process in a single desk visit. On the other hand... New York requires you to surrender your plates when you leave the state. If you fail to surrender in a timely fashion, you will be fined punitively. Indiana has no such requirement, they trust you to destroy the plates when you drop a registration for a vehicle. In fact, when I brought plates for my second vehicle to the BMV to surrender them, as the lease was being grounded, not only did they let me know that they actually don't do that at all, I don't need to do that, but also that I was entitled to a credit for the portion of my registration that I had not used (which is fairly substantial, as it is based on the worth of the vehicle and paid annually, like a use tax.) The desk attendant was able to help me fill that form out before I left, and about 45 days later, two checks came in the mail. Being from New York, I found this kind of experience at a bureaucracy to be quite pleasant and seemingly impossible, (and from what I hear asking people who are born and raised here, it has only just become this way recently because of many reforms that have been applied in the past 20 years.)
- Spooky23 7y ago
  Bureaucracy values consistency over all else. People are held accountable for not following the process, not for customer experience. That means either training people to be experts in whatever they are doing or removing agency from the individuals in the system. Having people with the right training, etc is obviously the better path, but it costs more. End of the day, this is why devops is a thing — traditional IT operations only does what it does, which is a problem when you’re changing and growing.
  - bildung 7y ago
    This. The opposite of bureaucracy slavishly following process usually is not good customer experience but corruption. If you open the pandora's box of following process being optional, usually the person with cash in hand wins. This obviously isn't an excuse for dump or inefficient processes, though.
- Klinky 7y ago
  Regardless of locale or public vs private entity. Trying to get customer service at many big name corps is a Kafkaesque experience. This is generally a fundamental human problem with how groups interact with outsiders to that group.
- anigbrowl 7y ago
  I made a mistake on my federal tax return some years ago and to my great surprise the IRS turned out to be super-easy to deal with. They told me the amount at issue in the notification letter, a human answered the answered the phone and was able to explain the mistake in a couple of minutes, and they gave me a comfortable window to pay them back. As it only involved a few hundred dollars and it was very much my mistake (a careless math error as opposed to being about interpretation of the rules) it's easy to feel positive about it, but I'd rather talk to the IRS for 15 minutes a week than ever call Comcast again about anything.
- the_watcher 7y ago
  > This has been my experience with pretty much any bureaucracy, regardless of locale. I'm reminded of the opening of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which satirized this 40 years ago.
- EdwardDiego 7y ago
  > This has been my experience with pretty much any bureaucracy, regardless of locale In my country (NZ) you can incorporate a country online in an hour. You will need to scan or fax your consent to be a director/shareholder forms though. https://companies-register.companiesoffice.govt.nz/help-centre/starting-a-company/incorporating-a-company/ https://companies-register.companiesoffice.govt.nz/help-cent... Likewise, I can update my income details for family tax credits etc. online with the IRD, our income tax system is very simple (sometimes referred to as pure) so I've never needed to file a tax return. I apply for hunting permits on government land online, and when I change address, I'm required to notify the Police as a registered firearms holder, which I do online, they then email me asking me to document my secure firearms storage, I email them a brief description and some photos, and then based on that, they decide whether or not to send out a Police Officer to confirm. I renew my car's registration online when emailed that it's due. On the odd occasion when I've gotten a speeding fine, I pay that online also. It's really all about complexity of legislation, and administrative desire to minimise red tape. Our government, fortunately, in the more important areas, has made active endeavours to reduce legislative complexity, and red tape. Funnily enough, I hit a lot more bureaucracy dealing with large companies, than our government.
- pelliphant 7y ago
  > any bureaucracy, regardless of locale. So, not only in america then? The reason why I am asking is because as a EU citizen, my experience is that that bureaucracy in northern europe is very different from bureaucracy in southern europe. Sure, It's not perfect anywhere, but framing this as a problem that can't be fixed, that it is equally bad everywhere is in my view not just wrong but actually harmful to society.
cowpig 7y ago
> Yes, this is just standard bureaucracy and it's Skip's fault, as people are saying. This does not match with my experience. Bureaucracies, like human being, vary greatly. I was able to incorporate in Colombia at the department of commerce four years ago barely speaking Spanish, in just a couple hours as the bureaucrats there were very helpful. I've also tanked tens of thousands of dollars on lawyers and spent over a year trying to reconfigure my corporate structure in a way that seems fairly trivial to me in Canada. The idea that all bureaucracies are inherently evil is a self-fulfilling prophecy imo.
- dennis_jeeves 7y ago
  >This does not match with my experience. How old are you and how long have you been working?
  - dang 7y ago
    That's unduly personal. Please don't do that here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - dennis_jeeves 7y ago
      Yes it is and, why not? If anyone ought to give any credibility to what you say on a subject, one needs to know your expertise and experience on the subject. Does that sound that fair enough? And neither of those 2 pieces of information is normally compromise your privacy in any manner. But the fact that you are so sensitive to this question of mine tells me a lot. Basically you are just a kid with little experience in the bid bad world. Why should anyone take you seriously on your experience with bureaucracies when others have an experience to the contrary? (I was hoping that you are someone with experience on making a bureaucracy work consistently in one's favor, other's could use your expertise.)
rolltiide 7y ago
People that defer too much respect to the state are at a disadvantage. What I mean by that is that some people will conclude "well that's the law! so don't break it" as opposed to looking at the consequences or seeing the relativity of the law, or the influence you can have on the law. Many laws don't have a consequence. Many laws were written by your rival. Many laws have consequences that have nothing to do with closing your Series C which is a far greater incentive. Disagreeing with this reality doesn't change the accuracy of this reality.
- SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
  And it's important to remember that the state doesn't see the law this way. I guarantee that whoever wrote the application forms didn't think they were passing a law about filling in section A3; they just wanted information about safety, and the style guide for writing forms says they get that information by putting a lettered and numbered section.
  - rolltiide 7y ago
    > And it's important to remember that the state doesn't see the law this way. Yes, it is important to remember that the state is imbued with power, and also in many areas they have discretion, so if you want something discretionary from the state you need to maintain a relationship with them or leverage. But the term you need to remember is "toothless", there are some toothless laws, and some toothless enforcement agencies When the consequences are negligible you can consider acting accordingly
- HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
  Yeah, and I got a $200 ticket a few days ago for going over the speed limit while avoiding a nighttime crash recently. Disagreeing with why you got a ticket doesn't matter once it's written. Breaking a law doesn't matter until it does, and then it can hurt quite a bit- that ticket cut into my Christmas present money. Similarly, breaking laws with you company can impact your bottom line, and your credibility. I'm still going to enjoy the accelerator, but I have learned not to do stupid stuff when you can't see everything that's going on. Same with laws, and car parts- if you don't know why they're there, you oughtn't break / remove them.
delfinom 7y ago
>But the bigger point is that the SF government apparently places more weight on minor application mistakes than actual, historical "bad" behavior. OR, SF used the tiniest technicality to reject because it's easier and immediate than on grounds of previous bad behavior ;)
r00fus 7y ago
Doesn’t seem “comical” to me, it smells like corruption.
bradleyjg 7y ago
What AirBnB and uber proved is that our white collar criminal laws are totally inadequate. We throw people in jail for stealing a six pack but not for blatantly conspiring to externalize billions onto the public at large in direct contraction of local laws. When the rewards of antisocial behavior are so high, only prison is adequate deterrent.
- dnautics 7y ago
  That's because the antisociality of breaking those laws is less provable than a violation of a materialized enumeration, in this sense: If you steal something from a shop, I can point a finger at the shopkeeper and say, yes that person was hurt, and by this much. Then I can point at the thief, and say that person gained, and by this much. If the identities of the victim and perpetrator are nebulous, and the externality is vague, and the laws being broken themselves are inconsistent across jurisdictions and have a history of abuse by those in power, and have in places themselves been a source of questionable action (like racist policy and blatant theft from the poor by municipalities), what you are asking for is far more challenging.
  - bradleyjg 7y ago
    It’s not more challenging in the sense of we don’t know how to write laws that would work or that those laws would be unconstitutional. Corporations have figured out how to use incentives, winks, and nods to avoid having anyone but the lowest level employees end up with provable beyond a reasonable doubt intent level mens rea. But we have solutions to that in our toolkit. We can define crimes as requiring only negligence or even strict liability crimes. We need only summon the collective will.
    - dnautics 7y ago
      Those laws that you propose will still themselves be used against less powerful companies, even weaponized, by more powerful companies. Or worse, weaponized by politicians.
tempsy 7y ago
There's probably a lot more to the story. And if you can't follow a simple set of instructions that is life or death for your startup then the management that oversaw the application (the legal team?) should be fired immediately.
tempsy 7y ago
The bigger problem with scooters is that they keep raising their prices. It was $.15/min a year ago and checking Lime and Uber it’s now $.32-.33/min or more than $20/hr! I hardly see anyone using them in SF anymore. It’s cheaper to use just a regular Uber. I’m convinced the only people using it now can’t do basic math.
- on_and_off 7y ago
  IMO SF streets are not that great for LMV. I use an eskate so it does not apply 100% to scooter with wheels that are twice as large, but most of my learning curve has been around learning to deal with bad road conditions. The roads I usually take are riddled with potholes or crossing rail tracks with huge gaps. Cars (or rather their drivers) are also very dangerous. I still skate to work almost every time when the weather permits but I can understand people choosing to use a car instead. I have good hopes for the future. Once Market Street becomes more welcoming to bikes, that will open up more possibilities, adding a couple more bike oriented streets could make the whole city way more bike/skate -able.
floatingatoll 7y ago
San Francisco has an unusual amount of bureaucratic infighting between departments that accompanies the usual baseline apathy and hostility of a large city towards others.

mstade 7y ago

> But the bigger point is that the SF government apparently places more weight on minor application mistakes than actual, historical "bad" behavior. This has been my experience with pretty much any bureaucracy, regardless of locale. E.g. when I incorporated my company, I had to send in the same application four times, each time paying an additional fee. Reason was I had minor, pointless really, mistakes in the application, a box I didn't realize had to be ticked, name in the date field and date in the name field, that sort of thing. The data entry people at the government agency could have easily resolved any mistakes with a phone call, but instead I get a letter in the mail a couple of weeks later, saying there's an error but not what the error is. So I have to call and ask, and of course they had no record of what the error was so we had to go over the application on the phone and find them. You'd think they'd tell me about the other errors then, but no, I had to do this four times. It took almost two months to get a simple form approved. I wish that was my only story of wasting time on bureaucracy, but there are plenty more where that came from.

koheripbal 7y ago
As a general rule that is particularily effective when dealing with government is that it is always easier to ask forgiveness than it is to ask permission. Government officials will always choose the easiest path forward - and that is almost always inaction.
reaperducer 7y ago
This has been my experience with pretty much any bureaucracy, regardless of locale. It doesn't have to be this way. I incorporated my first company in Chicago, and was stunned with how helpful the bureaucrats were. Yes, it was a little complex, especially in the years before "startups" were a thing, and you could do stuff online. But each department I had to work with had people who would sit me down at their desk and explain what they did, why I should care, and how to fill out the forms properly. Maybe the difference is that back then, you were expected to form a company in person, and not do everything online all by yourself and be an expert from day one. A massive thanks to the Illinois Department of Revenue people in the basement of the Thompson Center for all their openness and hand-holding. (In spite of all this, I still moved the company to another state a few years later because of Chicago + Illinois taxes and corruption.)
- mikojan 7y ago
  This has been my experience in dealing with the German collection office even though all had already been moved to web and I never once met a real person. They would always send me nice letters explaining what exactly was wrong. Even did this in cases in which they themselves corrected the error on my behave. On the other hand, dealing with private bureaucracies such as internet providers has always been a major pain. Very unhelpful, not accommodating at all.
  - HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
    This. If all the ISP's died near me, I probably wouldn't shed a tear.
- yebyen 7y ago
  Echo this sentiment from another Midwesterner, ex-pat former New York State resident. I moved to Indiana and have not had the experience of incorporating a business entity, but the experience I had at the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles has been one to make me question whether bureaucracies are really necessarily horrible all of the time. Starting with the experience of moving to the state, to contrast (Upstate) Western New York vs Indiana: My New York insurance provider determined that I was no longer residing in the state, so mailed me a letter of notice that my vehicle insurance was being cancelled. In truth this was the best thing that could have happened, because Indiana insurance is so much cheaper, and I got a deal through my new employer. I was dragging my feet on this because I did not know better about it, and knew it would be painful. So I went to get new insurance, and learned I would need to re-register my car... Visiting the Indiana BMV was like no other auto vehicle registration experience. They were able to take care of me same day, and with no long wait – I waited up to at most 15 minutes to the desk. I was not shuffled from one desk to another, we completed the process in a single desk visit. On the other hand... New York requires you to surrender your plates when you leave the state. If you fail to surrender in a timely fashion, you will be fined punitively. Indiana has no such requirement, they trust you to destroy the plates when you drop a registration for a vehicle. In fact, when I brought plates for my second vehicle to the BMV to surrender them, as the lease was being grounded, not only did they let me know that they actually don't do that at all, I don't need to do that, but also that I was entitled to a credit for the portion of my registration that I had not used (which is fairly substantial, as it is based on the worth of the vehicle and paid annually, like a use tax.) The desk attendant was able to help me fill that form out before I left, and about 45 days later, two checks came in the mail. Being from New York, I found this kind of experience at a bureaucracy to be quite pleasant and seemingly impossible, (and from what I hear asking people who are born and raised here, it has only just become this way recently because of many reforms that have been applied in the past 20 years.)
Spooky23 7y ago
Bureaucracy values consistency over all else. People are held accountable for not following the process, not for customer experience. That means either training people to be experts in whatever they are doing or removing agency from the individuals in the system. Having people with the right training, etc is obviously the better path, but it costs more. End of the day, this is why devops is a thing — traditional IT operations only does what it does, which is a problem when you’re changing and growing.
- bildung 7y ago
  This. The opposite of bureaucracy slavishly following process usually is not good customer experience but corruption. If you open the pandora's box of following process being optional, usually the person with cash in hand wins. This obviously isn't an excuse for dump or inefficient processes, though.
Klinky 7y ago
Regardless of locale or public vs private entity. Trying to get customer service at many big name corps is a Kafkaesque experience. This is generally a fundamental human problem with how groups interact with outsiders to that group.
anigbrowl 7y ago
I made a mistake on my federal tax return some years ago and to my great surprise the IRS turned out to be super-easy to deal with. They told me the amount at issue in the notification letter, a human answered the answered the phone and was able to explain the mistake in a couple of minutes, and they gave me a comfortable window to pay them back. As it only involved a few hundred dollars and it was very much my mistake (a careless math error as opposed to being about interpretation of the rules) it's easy to feel positive about it, but I'd rather talk to the IRS for 15 minutes a week than ever call Comcast again about anything.
the_watcher 7y ago
> This has been my experience with pretty much any bureaucracy, regardless of locale. I'm reminded of the opening of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which satirized this 40 years ago.
EdwardDiego 7y ago
> This has been my experience with pretty much any bureaucracy, regardless of locale In my country (NZ) you can incorporate a country online in an hour. You will need to scan or fax your consent to be a director/shareholder forms though. https://companies-register.companiesoffice.govt.nz/help-centre/starting-a-company/incorporating-a-company/ https://companies-register.companiesoffice.govt.nz/help-cent... Likewise, I can update my income details for family tax credits etc. online with the IRD, our income tax system is very simple (sometimes referred to as pure) so I've never needed to file a tax return. I apply for hunting permits on government land online, and when I change address, I'm required to notify the Police as a registered firearms holder, which I do online, they then email me asking me to document my secure firearms storage, I email them a brief description and some photos, and then based on that, they decide whether or not to send out a Police Officer to confirm. I renew my car's registration online when emailed that it's due. On the odd occasion when I've gotten a speeding fine, I pay that online also. It's really all about complexity of legislation, and administrative desire to minimise red tape. Our government, fortunately, in the more important areas, has made active endeavours to reduce legislative complexity, and red tape. Funnily enough, I hit a lot more bureaucracy dealing with large companies, than our government.
pelliphant 7y ago
> any bureaucracy, regardless of locale. So, not only in america then? The reason why I am asking is because as a EU citizen, my experience is that that bureaucracy in northern europe is very different from bureaucracy in southern europe. Sure, It's not perfect anywhere, but framing this as a problem that can't be fixed, that it is equally bad everywhere is in my view not just wrong but actually harmful to society.

cowpig 7y ago

> Yes, this is just standard bureaucracy and it's Skip's fault, as people are saying. This does not match with my experience. Bureaucracies, like human being, vary greatly. I was able to incorporate in Colombia at the department of commerce four years ago barely speaking Spanish, in just a couple hours as the bureaucrats there were very helpful. I've also tanked tens of thousands of dollars on lawyers and spent over a year trying to reconfigure my corporate structure in a way that seems fairly trivial to me in Canada. The idea that all bureaucracies are inherently evil is a self-fulfilling prophecy imo.

dennis_jeeves 7y ago
>This does not match with my experience. How old are you and how long have you been working?
- dang 7y ago
  That's unduly personal. Please don't do that here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - dennis_jeeves 7y ago
    Yes it is and, why not? If anyone ought to give any credibility to what you say on a subject, one needs to know your expertise and experience on the subject. Does that sound that fair enough? And neither of those 2 pieces of information is normally compromise your privacy in any manner. But the fact that you are so sensitive to this question of mine tells me a lot. Basically you are just a kid with little experience in the bid bad world. Why should anyone take you seriously on your experience with bureaucracies when others have an experience to the contrary? (I was hoping that you are someone with experience on making a bureaucracy work consistently in one's favor, other's could use your expertise.)

rolltiide 7y ago

People that defer too much respect to the state are at a disadvantage. What I mean by that is that some people will conclude "well that's the law! so don't break it" as opposed to looking at the consequences or seeing the relativity of the law, or the influence you can have on the law. Many laws don't have a consequence. Many laws were written by your rival. Many laws have consequences that have nothing to do with closing your Series C which is a far greater incentive. Disagreeing with this reality doesn't change the accuracy of this reality.

SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
And it's important to remember that the state doesn't see the law this way. I guarantee that whoever wrote the application forms didn't think they were passing a law about filling in section A3; they just wanted information about safety, and the style guide for writing forms says they get that information by putting a lettered and numbered section.
- rolltiide 7y ago
  > And it's important to remember that the state doesn't see the law this way. Yes, it is important to remember that the state is imbued with power, and also in many areas they have discretion, so if you want something discretionary from the state you need to maintain a relationship with them or leverage. But the term you need to remember is "toothless", there are some toothless laws, and some toothless enforcement agencies When the consequences are negligible you can consider acting accordingly
HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
Yeah, and I got a $200 ticket a few days ago for going over the speed limit while avoiding a nighttime crash recently. Disagreeing with why you got a ticket doesn't matter once it's written. Breaking a law doesn't matter until it does, and then it can hurt quite a bit- that ticket cut into my Christmas present money. Similarly, breaking laws with you company can impact your bottom line, and your credibility. I'm still going to enjoy the accelerator, but I have learned not to do stupid stuff when you can't see everything that's going on. Same with laws, and car parts- if you don't know why they're there, you oughtn't break / remove them.

delfinom 7y ago

>But the bigger point is that the SF government apparently places more weight on minor application mistakes than actual, historical "bad" behavior. OR, SF used the tiniest technicality to reject because it's easier and immediate than on grounds of previous bad behavior ;)

r00fus 7y ago

Doesn’t seem “comical” to me, it smells like corruption.

bradleyjg 7y ago

What AirBnB and uber proved is that our white collar criminal laws are totally inadequate. We throw people in jail for stealing a six pack but not for blatantly conspiring to externalize billions onto the public at large in direct contraction of local laws. When the rewards of antisocial behavior are so high, only prison is adequate deterrent.

dnautics 7y ago
That's because the antisociality of breaking those laws is less provable than a violation of a materialized enumeration, in this sense: If you steal something from a shop, I can point a finger at the shopkeeper and say, yes that person was hurt, and by this much. Then I can point at the thief, and say that person gained, and by this much. If the identities of the victim and perpetrator are nebulous, and the externality is vague, and the laws being broken themselves are inconsistent across jurisdictions and have a history of abuse by those in power, and have in places themselves been a source of questionable action (like racist policy and blatant theft from the poor by municipalities), what you are asking for is far more challenging.
- bradleyjg 7y ago
  It’s not more challenging in the sense of we don’t know how to write laws that would work or that those laws would be unconstitutional. Corporations have figured out how to use incentives, winks, and nods to avoid having anyone but the lowest level employees end up with provable beyond a reasonable doubt intent level mens rea. But we have solutions to that in our toolkit. We can define crimes as requiring only negligence or even strict liability crimes. We need only summon the collective will.
  - dnautics 7y ago
    Those laws that you propose will still themselves be used against less powerful companies, even weaponized, by more powerful companies. Or worse, weaponized by politicians.

tempsy 7y ago

There's probably a lot more to the story. And if you can't follow a simple set of instructions that is life or death for your startup then the management that oversaw the application (the legal team?) should be fired immediately.

tempsy 7y ago

The bigger problem with scooters is that they keep raising their prices. It was $.15/min a year ago and checking Lime and Uber it’s now $.32-.33/min or more than $20/hr! I hardly see anyone using them in SF anymore. It’s cheaper to use just a regular Uber. I’m convinced the only people using it now can’t do basic math.

on_and_off 7y ago
IMO SF streets are not that great for LMV. I use an eskate so it does not apply 100% to scooter with wheels that are twice as large, but most of my learning curve has been around learning to deal with bad road conditions. The roads I usually take are riddled with potholes or crossing rail tracks with huge gaps. Cars (or rather their drivers) are also very dangerous. I still skate to work almost every time when the weather permits but I can understand people choosing to use a car instead. I have good hopes for the future. Once Market Street becomes more welcoming to bikes, that will open up more possibilities, adding a couple more bike oriented streets could make the whole city way more bike/skate -able.

floatingatoll 7y ago

San Francisco has an unusual amount of bureaucratic infighting between departments that accompanies the usual baseline apathy and hostility of a large city towards others.