4 ms·

In 2024, it really is better to run a startup in SF

34 points by iancmceachern 2y ago

znpy 2y ago
This piece sounds like a real-estate-funds-funded advertisement Most of the AI stuff is in the cloud anyway, there’s little to no point in having an office in San Francisco
- iancmceachern 2y ago
  I've actually found the opposite to be true. My business has been 100% remote for most of its 10 years, buy I had an office in Sacramento and now I opened one in the SOMA neighborhood of SF. I must say, I still work a hybrid schedule, much from home (I live in the neighborhood too). I also must day that opening a physical location in SF has been one of the best investments I have ever made in my business. I now have people, target customers I used yo have to work hard to find and get time with, introducing themselves to ne coming by to day hello daily. Same thing with startups and VCs, there are a dozen or more VCs in walking distance to my office. It's like being a diamond cutter in the diamond district. I also want to note that opening an office somewhere does not necessarily tie to remote work or not. I work remotely often and it's a huge part of my quality of life, I also have an office in SF. I don't see either changing, and they are not tied.
  - mulmen 2y ago
    Can you explain how this actually works and what you do? How are customers finding you organically in meatspace? Do you have a sign out front?
    - iancmceachern 2y ago
      Gladly. I do most marketing that most other businesses do: - Google Maps/Yelp - set it up and look professional - Hired folks to send out targeted advertising postcards to potential clients in the area - Linkedin, etc. marketing (there are folks that can help you with this) - Organic marketing, I 3d print trinkets, bought stickers, etc. and hand them out, etc. - Being here when people email/call - Applicable trade shows (I go to medical device conferences in the spaces I work in, investor conferences I went to OpenSauce, it was great!) I run a hardware design firm, I design hardware (mostly medical devices). So there is always going to need to be a physical component to my business due to the fact we make physical objects.
      - mulmen 2y ago
        Thanks that’s very helpful! I’m curious what your offices actually contain. Do you have a lab/workshop? Is there a showroom? e: described here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41362166 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41362166
  - charlie0 2y ago
    Do you actually employ people in the SF office? Or is this more of a pied-à-terre for meeting new customers/investors?
    - iancmceachern 2y ago
      Sometimes, as contractors. I've been thinking of it like more of a music studio. I have a bunch of equipment, all setup and ready to use, and then when I, or a group (clients) need to get our work done we show up and do it, when we can do our work elsewhere we do. The point is the studio is here when we need it. In addition to 3d printers, CNC machines, CAD computers and similar engineering stuff I also have it setup with fancy cameras, video switchers and microphones so it's like a livestream studio. That allows me to give fancy looking "webinar" type zoom calls and client videos so that people can feel like they're working right in the studio with me. I had been calling it my "Design Lab", maybe I need to change it to "Design Studio"?
  - gottorf 2y ago
    > It's like being a diamond cutter in the diamond district. This is a good analogy. The old wisdom is that it's better go to go a restaurant surrounded by other restaurants than one that is off by itself; perhaps an implicit acknowledgment of the effects of competition and talent-pooling. How much this still applies in today's remote-everything world, that is an interesting question indeed.
    - SoftTalker 2y ago
      Despite the popularity and economy of remote work, having an office, even a small one, in an appropriate business district, is still a signal that "this isn't just my hobby."
    - iancmceachern 2y ago
      I design hardware, so there will always be a physical component to what I do. Rather than be a should I buy two birds or one type thing, it's really more of a two birds one stone situation.
- dartharva 2y ago
  It's not about resource location, it is about attracting talent. India is seeing a similar trend in many founders moving their startups to Bangalore despite higher costs and (often) lower quality of life than their starting cities, just because it has the largest talent pool of developers.
travismcpeak 2y ago
Resourcely is 100% remote and we're crushing it. We have more access to tech talent than companies that only hire in the Bay Area. This is a puff piece designed to get outrage clicks and nothing more.
- iancmceachern 2y ago
  Reminds me of a company that I work with a lot, and really respect- Fictiv. They're also nearly fully remote, and they also have an office in SF. Having an office somewhere doesn't tie to remote work or not. These are separate topics.
- bicx 2y ago
  Yeah this is a tired old narrative about SF. Remote-only companies can absolutely crush it and save money at the same time.
- brigadier132 2y ago
  I'm very pro remote work as an employee but as someone starting a company here is something I think about: By making RTO required for my startup, am I introducing a filter that will filter out many employees I wouldn't want anyway? There are real benefits to working side by side in office, just like for the business and employee there are real benefits to remote work. Hiring is so difficult already, having a filter that will get rid of the applicants not willing to put 100% into the startup seems like a good trade. Ok, with that said, now is the time I am destroyed by the work life balance mob.
  - beoberha 2y ago
    I love working from home :) But if I was doing the “give 100% to a startup” thing - as an employee or a founder - there’s no way I could stomach being 100% remote. No remote tools can replace having people in the same room working through a problem.
  - zer00eyz 2y ago
    > my startup This is where your a step out of pace. > by the work life balance mob And this is where they are missing the boat. Pay me enough to live, and save, give me a giant cut (not the meager equity of the last 25 years) and a place to show up to 3-4 days a week. The whole point of a startup, of putting in that work is that you're making a bet. A bet on the idea, and the team, the team is making that bet too. The table stakes for startups have changed, and you're going to need a much more egalitarian distribution for your first 10-50 hires now if you want to attract talent.
ineedaj0b 2y ago
my friend (not a crypto startup) is having good luck in Miami. it seems easier than ever to leave SF
- celdon25 2y ago
  Miami has been popping off in the tech scene from what I have been hearing.
outworlder 2y ago
Everything else being the same, it used to be the case that someone based on or close to SF would have an advantage – more so if your product is geared towards developers. SF and the Bay Area in general used to set worldwide trends, and I think that's still the case. However, after COVID we aren't back to the same level of conferences and other forms of gatherings that used to exist. I don't know if it still makes sense in the short term.
- sieabahlpark 2y ago
  [dead]
lolinder 2y ago
> The SF Bay Area remains by far the largest share of all tech employees in the U.S., with 49% of all Big Tech engineers and 27% of startup engineers, data from SignalFire’s Beacon platform shows. Not mentioned: with 10% of total US software engineers. When discussing startups maybe that's not relevant, but the article says "tech employees", not "big tech and startup employees". A lot of people forget that most companies who employee tech workers are neither big tech nor startups, which in turn means that most tech employees are at neither. This is likely increasingly true with the end of free money.
- paxys 2y ago
  Tech in this context means the tech sector of the economy. Yes there are software engineers working at a bank or government office, but they aren't tech [company] employees, hence not counted in this statistic.
  - thfuran 2y ago
    I work at a company whose only product is software, but it's about twenty years old and has a few hundred employees. It's a tech company that isn't a startup and isn't "big tech".
    - paxys 2y ago
      Ok, so you are a tech employee. What's your issue?
      - tourmalinetaco 2y ago
        Obviously, they the article misrepresents the proportions of tech employees, and thus them, and fails to mention that 80%+ of the tech economy is outside of SF.
  - jakeinspace 2y ago
    I don’t even understand what the term "tech sector" really means. It seems to be exclusively companies that sell or provide a software (platform) as their main product, plus chip/electronics manufacturers, but excludes defense contractors, aerospace (minus spacex maybe), automotive (minus Tesla maybe), biotech/pharma, and finance (aside from "fintech" startups). The word tech really got co-opted.
julianeon 2y ago
I think a lot of these types of articles make the mistake of overemphasizing the particular over the general. Here's a general way of putting it: Today, yes even in 2024, areas with concentrations of talent in [insert field] outperform those without those talent concentrations, despite higher costs. If you disagree, it's best to disagree with this thesis. If you don't disagree with the thesis, then it just becomes a matter of establishing 'does this area really have a concentration'. Example: media, NYC. Another example: AI startups, SF. I'll also mention that SF isn't fully standalone here. It's strength is largely due to the strength of the Bay Area as a whole and the companies with HQs there (Google, Meta, Apple, etc).
- paxys 2y ago
  Basically – the advantages of the Silicon Valley ecosystem that companies have enjoyed over the last 50+ years continue to be advantages. Covid didn't change the landscape as much as people think.
  - ProfessorLayton 2y ago
    It's also worth pointing out that the literal landscape in the SFBAY remains quite amazing, and lots of people do indeed live here because of it. Nearly flawless weather and easy access to nature is not something that's taken for granted. I'd continue to live here even if I didn't work in tech.
- brigadier132 2y ago
  > areas with concentrations of talent in [insert field] outperform Outperform in terms of company performance? Company performance per person? I'd be curious to hear from someone on the hiring side, how hard is it to get someone talented to move out from the SF Bay Area assuming you match compensation?
  - nine_k 2y ago
    To run a,startup, you need to run into co-founders, early employees with startup experience or with a right mindset and risk appetite, and into potential investors. This all works better with face-to-face meetings, weak personal connections that allow to reach the right-looking person you won't otherwise discover, and even serendipitous meetings in environments that tend to attract birds of a feather. SF, with all its bitter and needless shortcomings as a municipality, is still an excellent place to meet the right people for a startup. Even with the extreme ease of video calling these days, physical proximity has a certain edge.
lokimedes 2y ago
I recently started a new company focused on personal (non-cloud) AI computing. I’m located in Denmark, living standards are perfect and all that, but I miss the vibe of building around similar minded people - the “dynamism” to paraphrase a16z. Is it worth moving to SF for, I wonder?
- w10-1 2y ago
  Would your team go for tech intensives? Someone (Y-Combinator?) should rent some of SF's spare office/living space (expensify?) and host far-flung company tech teams for 2-week work vacations where they collaborate with local companies. This would work particularly well for collaboration between customer-facing AI companies and infrastructure AI companies, or for coordinating infrastructure bits.
  - lokimedes 2y ago
    That would really be great. A step below could be having an organized way to set up meeting points, - like designated cafes, lobbies, and co-working spaces where there's a good chance of meeting likeminded people, investors and others interested in expanding their network overseas. My plan right now, is to travel to the west coast in October, but I don't really want to fill up my time with 1-2-1 meetings, as it is serendipity and broad "exposure" I'm longing for. Applying for YC is obviously a way to get that, but three months away from my kids is holding that back.
josephmosby 2y ago
There are a couple of buried pieces in here. The first two examples are founders who moved from Europe to San Francisco. Given the entrepreneurial ecosystem in most mid-to-large U.S. cities and more favorable ways of working, I would imagine that you could get a win by moving to any U.S. geography with >1M people versus being a software entrepreneur in a EU regulatory environment. San Francisco is one of the examples... but Chicago probably is, too. And if you're a founder, there are all sorts of things you need for your business beyond software engineers. You need access to capital, and most VCs are based in the Bay Area and would prefer you be there too. You need access to talented advisors, and later on, experienced hires. Those are also often in SF. It's not impossible to do elsewhere, just more challenging. Neither of those examples make the case that it's better to hire your engineering team in SF, or that your rank-and-file employees should be there. Yet the article jumps to imply that's the case.
- snowpid 2y ago
  None of the founders mention the EU regulatory environment.
closeparen 2y ago
I can see the appeal of working for SF startups while living like a college student for a few years in your early 20s, or making a career out of doing it remotely. I don't get how the in-person startup talent pool has any staying power. A 3/2 in a decent school district with a commute under an hour would be an insane splurge even for someone with liquid Big Tech TC.
robotburrito 2y ago
Sure is nice to meet your co workers in the Golden Gate Park and live near arguably, the most beautiful locations in the US. If you’re working yourself to the bone at a startup may as well do it somewhere nice.
theogravity 2y ago
The article says run a startup in San Francisco, yet it uses stats for the entire bay area. In one example, a founder says, “So I’m back full time-ish to the SF Bay Area. As, often quietly, are so many leaders and execs I’ve known for years.” So are they actually moving to SF city, or just some place in the bay area? As someone who lives in the deep south bay, communing to SF is out of the question as it would take an hour+ to do one-way. I also just don't like SF in general.
- zer00eyz 2y ago
  > So are they actually moving to SF city, or just some place in the bay area? Your question is completely valid and misses what the bay is. It's not SF or San Jose, or Oakland or the North or East bay... its all of it. Depending on your politics you will hear SF is either gritty or beautiful. The reality is that is has always been both... Zodiac Killer, Patty Hearst, Jim Jones... LSD culture... The founding of the valley (hardware) and software (BSD, Ingress(all the work of stone breaker), Burning man, The first dot com Bubble... the resurgence of tech while the mortgage market burned. Move to the bay, move around the bay, at some point you will find a place to call home, and people to be your "tribe".
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
LudwigNagasena 2y ago
“Running a startup” means trying to mingle with potential clients and investors in official and unofficial settings. It’s hard to visit an after-party over Zoom. So that makes sense. As a worker though that’s a totally different story.
dangles 2y ago
It's too bad SF is a terrible place to live, especially with kids. RTO can be a useful crutch for companies with little vision or product leadership, but is certainly being pushed beyond its utility by those with a vested interest in Bay Area and/or commercial real estate.
jppope 2y ago
Feels like propaganda more than a news article. Where is tech crunch based?
w10-1 2y ago
The key point is not the share of overall tech workers, or emerging talent, or capitalists, but finding those who are willing and able to sort through the uncertainties of new technologies and markets to realize their promise. Since time to market (i.e., time to engagement with the real problems) is the key factor in success in these businesses, introducing delays by spending more time seeking collaborators can be a strategic mistake. To me, the real problem is that deciders make the converse mistake: of quickly choosing those they know over those they have to learn about. It's less work and less emotionally risky, but it's a trap that leads you to defer issues about how you're trying to build teams until you have conflicts - particularly if people avoid conflict. Starting when you don't really know each other makes it easier to scale past the point where everyone really doesn't know each other.
seydor 2y ago
> San Francisco’s AI startup boom is so big It's really all about the money. The only ones who can compete at those obscene amounts of money are saudis or sth. If they decided to build a liberal utopia for people who want to be rich, they would have end up with the best universities and the best tech talent. But nobody wants to be rich just to be stuck in a repressive hellhole.
- drawnwren 2y ago
  This is why Dubai exists.
  - seydor 2y ago
    it's not liberal enough, it doesn't have that much money, and the justice system can't be trusted. Maybe singapore with trillions of money would be a better candidate
blastbking 2y ago
the 'data' used is pretty suspicious in this article obviously, international founders moving to america will have a better time raising money and if you're selling B2B SaaS and 90% of your customers are physically headquartered in SF, you're handicapping yourself living elsewhere.. at some level people will just ignore your sales motion if they don't see a san francisco headquarters on the website i've lived in both SF and NYC and worked on my own startup in both NYC has a pretty vibrant startup ecosystem but doesn't compare with SF, except for some reason there's way more healthcare founders in NYC (prob bc bay area healthcare scene is dominated by large hospital systems that are impossible to sell to) but SF is such a disgusting city overrun with homeless people and crime NYC isn't exactly the prettiest either but pick your poison i guess i personally prefer south bay over SF hope SF gets its act together since I don't feel safe living there

34 points by iancmceachern 2y ago

znpy 2y ago

This piece sounds like a real-estate-funds-funded advertisement Most of the AI stuff is in the cloud anyway, there’s little to no point in having an office in San Francisco

iancmceachern 2y ago
I've actually found the opposite to be true. My business has been 100% remote for most of its 10 years, buy I had an office in Sacramento and now I opened one in the SOMA neighborhood of SF. I must say, I still work a hybrid schedule, much from home (I live in the neighborhood too). I also must day that opening a physical location in SF has been one of the best investments I have ever made in my business. I now have people, target customers I used yo have to work hard to find and get time with, introducing themselves to ne coming by to day hello daily. Same thing with startups and VCs, there are a dozen or more VCs in walking distance to my office. It's like being a diamond cutter in the diamond district. I also want to note that opening an office somewhere does not necessarily tie to remote work or not. I work remotely often and it's a huge part of my quality of life, I also have an office in SF. I don't see either changing, and they are not tied.
- mulmen 2y ago
  Can you explain how this actually works and what you do? How are customers finding you organically in meatspace? Do you have a sign out front?
  - iancmceachern 2y ago
    Gladly. I do most marketing that most other businesses do: - Google Maps/Yelp - set it up and look professional - Hired folks to send out targeted advertising postcards to potential clients in the area - Linkedin, etc. marketing (there are folks that can help you with this) - Organic marketing, I 3d print trinkets, bought stickers, etc. and hand them out, etc. - Being here when people email/call - Applicable trade shows (I go to medical device conferences in the spaces I work in, investor conferences I went to OpenSauce, it was great!) I run a hardware design firm, I design hardware (mostly medical devices). So there is always going to need to be a physical component to my business due to the fact we make physical objects.
    - mulmen 2y ago
      Thanks that’s very helpful! I’m curious what your offices actually contain. Do you have a lab/workshop? Is there a showroom? e: described here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41362166 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41362166
- charlie0 2y ago
  Do you actually employ people in the SF office? Or is this more of a pied-à-terre for meeting new customers/investors?
  - iancmceachern 2y ago
    Sometimes, as contractors. I've been thinking of it like more of a music studio. I have a bunch of equipment, all setup and ready to use, and then when I, or a group (clients) need to get our work done we show up and do it, when we can do our work elsewhere we do. The point is the studio is here when we need it. In addition to 3d printers, CNC machines, CAD computers and similar engineering stuff I also have it setup with fancy cameras, video switchers and microphones so it's like a livestream studio. That allows me to give fancy looking "webinar" type zoom calls and client videos so that people can feel like they're working right in the studio with me. I had been calling it my "Design Lab", maybe I need to change it to "Design Studio"?
- gottorf 2y ago
  > It's like being a diamond cutter in the diamond district. This is a good analogy. The old wisdom is that it's better go to go a restaurant surrounded by other restaurants than one that is off by itself; perhaps an implicit acknowledgment of the effects of competition and talent-pooling. How much this still applies in today's remote-everything world, that is an interesting question indeed.
  - SoftTalker 2y ago
    Despite the popularity and economy of remote work, having an office, even a small one, in an appropriate business district, is still a signal that "this isn't just my hobby."
  - iancmceachern 2y ago
    I design hardware, so there will always be a physical component to what I do. Rather than be a should I buy two birds or one type thing, it's really more of a two birds one stone situation.
dartharva 2y ago
It's not about resource location, it is about attracting talent. India is seeing a similar trend in many founders moving their startups to Bangalore despite higher costs and (often) lower quality of life than their starting cities, just because it has the largest talent pool of developers.

travismcpeak 2y ago

Resourcely is 100% remote and we're crushing it. We have more access to tech talent than companies that only hire in the Bay Area. This is a puff piece designed to get outrage clicks and nothing more.

iancmceachern 2y ago
Reminds me of a company that I work with a lot, and really respect- Fictiv. They're also nearly fully remote, and they also have an office in SF. Having an office somewhere doesn't tie to remote work or not. These are separate topics.
bicx 2y ago
Yeah this is a tired old narrative about SF. Remote-only companies can absolutely crush it and save money at the same time.
brigadier132 2y ago
I'm very pro remote work as an employee but as someone starting a company here is something I think about: By making RTO required for my startup, am I introducing a filter that will filter out many employees I wouldn't want anyway? There are real benefits to working side by side in office, just like for the business and employee there are real benefits to remote work. Hiring is so difficult already, having a filter that will get rid of the applicants not willing to put 100% into the startup seems like a good trade. Ok, with that said, now is the time I am destroyed by the work life balance mob.
- beoberha 2y ago
  I love working from home :) But if I was doing the “give 100% to a startup” thing - as an employee or a founder - there’s no way I could stomach being 100% remote. No remote tools can replace having people in the same room working through a problem.
- zer00eyz 2y ago
  > my startup This is where your a step out of pace. > by the work life balance mob And this is where they are missing the boat. Pay me enough to live, and save, give me a giant cut (not the meager equity of the last 25 years) and a place to show up to 3-4 days a week. The whole point of a startup, of putting in that work is that you're making a bet. A bet on the idea, and the team, the team is making that bet too. The table stakes for startups have changed, and you're going to need a much more egalitarian distribution for your first 10-50 hires now if you want to attract talent.

ineedaj0b 2y ago

my friend (not a crypto startup) is having good luck in Miami. it seems easier than ever to leave SF

celdon25 2y ago
Miami has been popping off in the tech scene from what I have been hearing.

outworlder 2y ago

Everything else being the same, it used to be the case that someone based on or close to SF would have an advantage – more so if your product is geared towards developers. SF and the Bay Area in general used to set worldwide trends, and I think that's still the case. However, after COVID we aren't back to the same level of conferences and other forms of gatherings that used to exist. I don't know if it still makes sense in the short term.

sieabahlpark 2y ago
[dead]

lolinder 2y ago

> The SF Bay Area remains by far the largest share of all tech employees in the U.S., with 49% of all Big Tech engineers and 27% of startup engineers, data from SignalFire’s Beacon platform shows. Not mentioned: with 10% of total US software engineers. When discussing startups maybe that's not relevant, but the article says "tech employees", not "big tech and startup employees". A lot of people forget that most companies who employee tech workers are neither big tech nor startups, which in turn means that most tech employees are at neither. This is likely increasingly true with the end of free money.

paxys 2y ago
Tech in this context means the tech sector of the economy. Yes there are software engineers working at a bank or government office, but they aren't tech [company] employees, hence not counted in this statistic.
- thfuran 2y ago
  I work at a company whose only product is software, but it's about twenty years old and has a few hundred employees. It's a tech company that isn't a startup and isn't "big tech".
  - paxys 2y ago
    Ok, so you are a tech employee. What's your issue?
    - tourmalinetaco 2y ago
      Obviously, they the article misrepresents the proportions of tech employees, and thus them, and fails to mention that 80%+ of the tech economy is outside of SF.
- jakeinspace 2y ago
  I don’t even understand what the term "tech sector" really means. It seems to be exclusively companies that sell or provide a software (platform) as their main product, plus chip/electronics manufacturers, but excludes defense contractors, aerospace (minus spacex maybe), automotive (minus Tesla maybe), biotech/pharma, and finance (aside from "fintech" startups). The word tech really got co-opted.

julianeon 2y ago

I think a lot of these types of articles make the mistake of overemphasizing the particular over the general. Here's a general way of putting it: Today, yes even in 2024, areas with concentrations of talent in [insert field] outperform those without those talent concentrations, despite higher costs. If you disagree, it's best to disagree with this thesis. If you don't disagree with the thesis, then it just becomes a matter of establishing 'does this area really have a concentration'. Example: media, NYC. Another example: AI startups, SF. I'll also mention that SF isn't fully standalone here. It's strength is largely due to the strength of the Bay Area as a whole and the companies with HQs there (Google, Meta, Apple, etc).

paxys 2y ago
Basically – the advantages of the Silicon Valley ecosystem that companies have enjoyed over the last 50+ years continue to be advantages. Covid didn't change the landscape as much as people think.
- ProfessorLayton 2y ago
  It's also worth pointing out that the literal landscape in the SFBAY remains quite amazing, and lots of people do indeed live here because of it. Nearly flawless weather and easy access to nature is not something that's taken for granted. I'd continue to live here even if I didn't work in tech.
brigadier132 2y ago
> areas with concentrations of talent in [insert field] outperform Outperform in terms of company performance? Company performance per person? I'd be curious to hear from someone on the hiring side, how hard is it to get someone talented to move out from the SF Bay Area assuming you match compensation?
- nine_k 2y ago
  To run a,startup, you need to run into co-founders, early employees with startup experience or with a right mindset and risk appetite, and into potential investors. This all works better with face-to-face meetings, weak personal connections that allow to reach the right-looking person you won't otherwise discover, and even serendipitous meetings in environments that tend to attract birds of a feather. SF, with all its bitter and needless shortcomings as a municipality, is still an excellent place to meet the right people for a startup. Even with the extreme ease of video calling these days, physical proximity has a certain edge.

lokimedes 2y ago

I recently started a new company focused on personal (non-cloud) AI computing. I’m located in Denmark, living standards are perfect and all that, but I miss the vibe of building around similar minded people - the “dynamism” to paraphrase a16z. Is it worth moving to SF for, I wonder?

w10-1 2y ago
Would your team go for tech intensives? Someone (Y-Combinator?) should rent some of SF's spare office/living space (expensify?) and host far-flung company tech teams for 2-week work vacations where they collaborate with local companies. This would work particularly well for collaboration between customer-facing AI companies and infrastructure AI companies, or for coordinating infrastructure bits.
- lokimedes 2y ago
  That would really be great. A step below could be having an organized way to set up meeting points, - like designated cafes, lobbies, and co-working spaces where there's a good chance of meeting likeminded people, investors and others interested in expanding their network overseas. My plan right now, is to travel to the west coast in October, but I don't really want to fill up my time with 1-2-1 meetings, as it is serendipity and broad "exposure" I'm longing for. Applying for YC is obviously a way to get that, but three months away from my kids is holding that back.

josephmosby 2y ago

There are a couple of buried pieces in here. The first two examples are founders who moved from Europe to San Francisco. Given the entrepreneurial ecosystem in most mid-to-large U.S. cities and more favorable ways of working, I would imagine that you could get a win by moving to any U.S. geography with >1M people versus being a software entrepreneur in a EU regulatory environment. San Francisco is one of the examples... but Chicago probably is, too. And if you're a founder, there are all sorts of things you need for your business beyond software engineers. You need access to capital, and most VCs are based in the Bay Area and would prefer you be there too. You need access to talented advisors, and later on, experienced hires. Those are also often in SF. It's not impossible to do elsewhere, just more challenging. Neither of those examples make the case that it's better to hire your engineering team in SF, or that your rank-and-file employees should be there. Yet the article jumps to imply that's the case.

snowpid 2y ago
None of the founders mention the EU regulatory environment.

closeparen 2y ago

I can see the appeal of working for SF startups while living like a college student for a few years in your early 20s, or making a career out of doing it remotely. I don't get how the in-person startup talent pool has any staying power. A 3/2 in a decent school district with a commute under an hour would be an insane splurge even for someone with liquid Big Tech TC.

robotburrito 2y ago

Sure is nice to meet your co workers in the Golden Gate Park and live near arguably, the most beautiful locations in the US. If you’re working yourself to the bone at a startup may as well do it somewhere nice.

theogravity 2y ago

The article says run a startup in San Francisco, yet it uses stats for the entire bay area. In one example, a founder says, “So I’m back full time-ish to the SF Bay Area. As, often quietly, are so many leaders and execs I’ve known for years.” So are they actually moving to SF city, or just some place in the bay area? As someone who lives in the deep south bay, communing to SF is out of the question as it would take an hour+ to do one-way. I also just don't like SF in general.

zer00eyz 2y ago
> So are they actually moving to SF city, or just some place in the bay area? Your question is completely valid and misses what the bay is. It's not SF or San Jose, or Oakland or the North or East bay... its all of it. Depending on your politics you will hear SF is either gritty or beautiful. The reality is that is has always been both... Zodiac Killer, Patty Hearst, Jim Jones... LSD culture... The founding of the valley (hardware) and software (BSD, Ingress(all the work of stone breaker), Burning man, The first dot com Bubble... the resurgence of tech while the mortgage market burned. Move to the bay, move around the bay, at some point you will find a place to call home, and people to be your "tribe".

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

LudwigNagasena 2y ago

“Running a startup” means trying to mingle with potential clients and investors in official and unofficial settings. It’s hard to visit an after-party over Zoom. So that makes sense. As a worker though that’s a totally different story.

dangles 2y ago

It's too bad SF is a terrible place to live, especially with kids. RTO can be a useful crutch for companies with little vision or product leadership, but is certainly being pushed beyond its utility by those with a vested interest in Bay Area and/or commercial real estate.

jppope 2y ago

Feels like propaganda more than a news article. Where is tech crunch based?

w10-1 2y ago

The key point is not the share of overall tech workers, or emerging talent, or capitalists, but finding those who are willing and able to sort through the uncertainties of new technologies and markets to realize their promise. Since time to market (i.e., time to engagement with the real problems) is the key factor in success in these businesses, introducing delays by spending more time seeking collaborators can be a strategic mistake. To me, the real problem is that deciders make the converse mistake: of quickly choosing those they know over those they have to learn about. It's less work and less emotionally risky, but it's a trap that leads you to defer issues about how you're trying to build teams until you have conflicts - particularly if people avoid conflict. Starting when you don't really know each other makes it easier to scale past the point where everyone really doesn't know each other.

seydor 2y ago

> San Francisco’s AI startup boom is so big It's really all about the money. The only ones who can compete at those obscene amounts of money are saudis or sth. If they decided to build a liberal utopia for people who want to be rich, they would have end up with the best universities and the best tech talent. But nobody wants to be rich just to be stuck in a repressive hellhole.

drawnwren 2y ago
This is why Dubai exists.
- seydor 2y ago
  it's not liberal enough, it doesn't have that much money, and the justice system can't be trusted. Maybe singapore with trillions of money would be a better candidate

blastbking 2y ago

the 'data' used is pretty suspicious in this article obviously, international founders moving to america will have a better time raising money and if you're selling B2B SaaS and 90% of your customers are physically headquartered in SF, you're handicapping yourself living elsewhere.. at some level people will just ignore your sales motion if they don't see a san francisco headquarters on the website i've lived in both SF and NYC and worked on my own startup in both NYC has a pretty vibrant startup ecosystem but doesn't compare with SF, except for some reason there's way more healthcare founders in NYC (prob bc bay area healthcare scene is dominated by large hospital systems that are impossible to sell to) but SF is such a disgusting city overrun with homeless people and crime NYC isn't exactly the prettiest either but pick your poison i guess i personally prefer south bay over SF hope SF gets its act together since I don't feel safe living there