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These stats are outrageous and the presentation is misleading: 1) Please do not go thinking that $7.5B in VC deals * 46% are seed/series A = ~$3.2B in seed mon
by tansey 15y ago
These stats are outrageous and the presentation is misleading:
1) Please do not go thinking that $7.5B in VC deals * 46% are seed/series A = ~$3.2B in seed money. The bulk of that money is skewed upward to the other 54%. If we assume the average size of a deal in the 46% is around $300k (since series A rounds are more and seed rounds are less), then you get about a $100M market for early-stage investments.
2) The section titled "Average Salaries in the Valley" is actually a graph of median salaries. It worries me that the infographic uses the terms "average" and "median" interchangeably, though at least they chose the better statistic for the chart. They also make no mention of stock options or equity that you get with those salaries, so it's not really a total compensation number.
3) The buying power part is completely off base. Having lived in San Diego for 3 years before moving to Palo Alto, I can definitely say I would rather make $92k here than $59k in SD. I imagine they are including all of San Diego County, which is huge and has vast differences in quality of life. Compare that to Silicon Valley, which is generally nice everywhere you go. If you're living in a comparable part of San Diego, I would imagine you are looking at no more than a 10% difference, tops.
4) The cost of housing is also ludicrous. Either the average is getting skewed because of some super expensive listings or they are simply talking about the average price of a lease. I just moved out of a 5 bedroom house in Palo Alto which cost $3300/mo. I was paying $650/mo for my room, which is about $150 less than what I was paying to live in UTC in San Diego and about half the cost of a beach-front apartment rental there.
In summary, there's lies, damned lies, and statistics. Just move here. You'll be glad you did.
- baconface 15y ago$60k in Denver >> $90k in Palo Alto
- josscrowcroft 15y agoAwesome points
- trimis 15y ago4) I'm assuming their housing calculation comes from a single person/family renting and is not dependent on whether or not you have roommates and thus based on the split between them.
- timcederman 15y ago"Palo Alto" is such a nebulous term. If you want to live close to downtown or midtown, $3300/month might get you an "okay" 2 or 3 br/1ba at the moment. Anywhere nice around there is now over $4k a month, including a lot of apartments.
- orijing 15y agoRegarding 2, I learned this a few years ago but "average" refers to any of the central statistics, including median, and even mode. [1] I always refer to the arithmetic mean when I say 'average', though. I make sure I'm clear when I'm referring to something else, like the median or geometric mean. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average
- tansey 15y agoLearn something new every day. :) Still, in common usage, I would say it's implied that "average" is the arithmetic mean. I guess I technically never said that they're wrong to use the two interchangeably, just that it "worries me."