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The little things I learned from the Valley
- ttrreeww 14y agoI hope more startups move to Texas... housing cost are way too high in SV.
- coolsunglasses 14y agoI, (and my next startup), are possibly moving to Austin soon. So there's one for you.
- ttrreeww 14y agoThank you! I hope it's the start of a new trend. Google fiber is just the icing on the cake!
- michaelochurch 14y agoWhat's your next startup?
- coolsunglasses 14y agoI'm not sure if you're curious or about to make an example of me.
- michaelochurch 14y agoCurious. You can tell me offline, or not at all. I'm pretty excited to see the growth of a strong startup scene outside of NYC + SF. I feel like VC-istan is played out and I'm trying to get a coherent feel for what's next.
- coolsunglasses 14y agoNormally I'd prefer a B2B/B2D type thing for practical reasons, but it's a consumer fashion thing. Discovery and recommendation oriented, designed to get the rather large percentage of the young population that isn't dressing as well as they could on board. Especially young professional-age men. It's an itch-scratching problem that is dear to me. Even if it doesn't develop into a sustainable business it's worth it to me to attack. I'm in Mountain View right now, consulting after my stint as a non-founder CTO. Not going non-founder route again. I'm bootstrapping at least initially so I get more utility from cheap land and nice people than I do accessibility of seed money.
- michaelochurch 14y agoNormally I'd prefer a B2B/B2D type thing for practical reasons, but it's a consumer fashion thing. Interesting. That seems more like a New York startup, but COL would really be out of your favor out here, and you'd be competing with finance on salaries. Discovery and recommendation oriented, designed to get the rather large percentage of the young population that isn't dressing as well as they could on board. Especially young professional-age men. That's a great concept. I think a lot of us are late to realize that how you dress (especially for work) matters. I didn't know how to dress until I met my wife. I hope that it works out. I'm in Mountain View right now, consulting after my stint as a non-founder CTO. Not going non-founder route again. I hear you on that. I feel like startup founders overestimate the degree to which they've "de-risked" the business, mainly as an excuse to take 10x the equity. In truth, a company with 18 months to live, no free-standing reputation, and that fires without severance is not de-risked at all.
- michaelochurch 14y agoI'm starting to think the balance is going to shift to lower-COL areas. This is based on my experience having been on the hiring side. It's not about salaries because those aren't the major issue. The COL difference is minor in comparison to the execution risks. In fact, the traditional reason why startups "had to be" in NYC, Boston, and San Francisco is job-market latency. Yes, you can find great engineers elsewhere, but for some ridiculous purple squirrel query (production experience in the 3 NoSQLs you use) that needs to be filled tomorrow, you need to be in the Valley or New York (due to Wall Street, there's a lot of technical talent, albeit expensive). If you're in Austin, you can find great people but probably not the guy who matches your purple squirrel query exactly. That said, a place like NYC has the urban dating problem (too many alternatives, so people treat each other like shit). We'd write great offers to people only to have them picked off based on minutiae. We were ridiculously picky and rejected people for dumb reasons; only fair for them to be. However, I feel like the grow-fast-or-die red-ocean nonsense is played-out and the next wave is going to be in the mid-growth (5-30%/year headcount growth, focus on technical excellence) space which doesn't need to be in the Valley or New York.
- tocomment 14y agoWhat are some promising low COL areas? (I like your thinking by the way)
- michaelochurch 14y agoI can only speak for the U.S. here. * Austin, TX (seems to be the obvious pull-ahead winner in 2013) * Portland, OR (great weather, beautiful, lots of potential) * Madison, WI (near Chicago, great college town, not as cold as people think) * Minneapolis, MN (underrated gem, beautiful, just very cold; I'm told they haven't had a 60+ yet in 2013) * Pittsburgh, PA (CMU is right there; how is it not kicking ass?) * Ann Arbor, MI (another Midwestern gem) * Chicago, IL (if you consider that low-COL) * Toronto, Ontario (ok, not a US city, but I spent a summer there and loved it) Almost none of these would be considered low-COL (they're above 100) and relative to their regions they're quite high, but they're a hell of a lot cheaper than New York or Palo Alto. Oh, one ass-kicking advantage of the low-COL places: people actually want to be lifelong software engineers. In New York, you can't raise a family on a (non-WS quant) engineer's salary. Of course, most of young idiots have this insane dream of having a manager's title and pay (plus real stock options!) which you can get by 27 if you play the politics, but being full-time programmers and just using their magic manager powers to assign themselves the best work. It turns out not to work that way. Poor them... I really think the fact that one can't raise a family out here on an engineer's salary is toxic to the culture. It creates the wrong kind of ambition.
- zalew 14y ago> Startup employees don’t make as much cash as I thought it would be. And that shouldn’t be the perspective. what should be the perspective then?
- Cherian 14y agoLearning, wearing 10 hats, broad range of knowledge from tech, design, hiring, firing, hyper productiveness, fun all the way up to optimized way of buying coffee. A startup experience will definetly accelerator your career. You are likely to be more valuable than you were x months/years before the startup.
- zalew 14y agofor me it sounds like it's what you do when you start your own company, not when you get hired by one. does it take applying the name 'startup' to any company to embrace all that awesomeness in contrast to being hired by a company that doesn't meet this definition? I'm asking seriously. taking into account that 90% of startups fail in one way or the other, how is exactly working in an unknown unsuccessful young company such a strong career booster?
- dreamdu5t 14y agoBecause you are usually given the chance to learn vast amounts of various skills. At most jobs, your opportunities for learning new things or playing new roles is limited.
- michaelochurch 14y agohow is exactly working in an unknown unsuccessful young company such a strong career booster? It's not. There are plenty of people out there with no-name companies on their resumes. You learn a lot, but then go into a subordinate position where everyone thinks you're an idiot. Either you push back and end up in lots of conflict (possibly fired) or you accept it and gradually become what they think of you.
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- dasil003 14y ago> Palo Alto/University Ave is no more the place to be. You have to be in San Franciso. Caltrain/BART rides are perceived too long. Is this true? If so why is PA real estate still so sky high? I understand if your startup culture is based on youthful hipness, but that is orthogonal to the viability of a startup.
- ethikal 14y agoShouldn't high costs be a deterrent to startups? How can a startup be "lean" if its employees need to pay most of their salary in rent?
- doktrin 14y agoWell that's the employees decision. Rent is high just about everywhere from Oakland to San Jose. When taking into account transportation costs, paying a premium to be in San Francisco is often worth it from a cultural standpoint. I can't really speak to Oakland, but after having worked on the Peninsula I would unequivocally not want to live there.
- ttrreeww 14y agoIn a gold rush, the miner (employee) don't make the big bucks. It's the miner support (landlord, investor, founders) that make the huge bucks.
- dasil003 14y agoDepends on if there is any actual gold. Whoever strikes the mother lode makes many orders of magnitude more than the suppliers (eg. Facebook).
- samstave 14y agoPA has never been cheap...
- BrianEatWorld 14y agoI don't know what PA/University Ave used to be, but I wasn't impressed with it when I arrived in the Valley two years ago. I would say the community is what you make it. Personally, I found a nice home amongst MeetUp groups and the local Techshop to the point I am far happier in San Jose than even PA. Its like all the nerding out with none of the pretension and rent is half as expensive. Then again, maybe things are different if you are trying to be a founder.
- lowglow 14y ago> Palo Alto/University Ave is no more the place to be. You have to be in San Franciso. I agree. The culture, inspiration, community, and experience here is a bit unparalleled. I can just as easily lock myself away to build product as I can go out and get away from marinating in self induced frustrations. There is also money out here. People are willing to travel and visit, there are a ton of venues for meetups, etc. I couldn't imagine a better place to be (at the moment) for both tech and life.
- ucee054 14y agoHow can it be "a bit" unparalleled? Is that like being "a little bit" pregnant?
- lowglow 14y agoIs there a word/phrase for when you want to use a word, but it sounds cliche, so you try to underplay the use of that word by prepending some diminutive modifier?
- ucee054 14y agoWell it's very amusing if you do that to a superlative, it might be better to just go with the cliche. I sought a synonym for unparalleled for you here: http://thesaurus.com/browse/unparalleled http://thesaurus.com/browse/unparalleled But these seem to be even worse. Sorry, I tried.
- josh2600 14y agoThere is no series A crunch, only too many seed rounds IMHO. Very few companies need to raise more than $1M to reach profitability any more, so traction should be required before raising money, but if investors wait for traction, they'll miss the really big deals. This sets up a dynamic, particularly influenced by the JOBS act, where unsophisticated investors can flood the market with cheap capital. When it comes time for a startup to raise money from serious investors, they won't touch it unless it looks like Midas. I'd argue that the Series A levels haven't really changed from year to year, but that we perceive it as a Crunch because of the ridiculously large number of seed rounds.
- jaredsohn 14y ago>I'd argue that the Series A levels haven't really changed from year to year It doesn't take away from your point, but I believe there are actually an increasing number of Series A level investments happening. We call the current situation a crunch because we're measuring the competitiveness of going from seed to Series A.
- RKoutnik 14y agoIs it just me, or are big-ticket gambles no longer viable in today's Valley culture? The article mentions that "Ultra local services like Uber, Lyft, Instacart, ZeroCater, Chewse, etc. are raising more cash than world domination disruptive ideas." Add this to an underwhelming W13 Demo Day in terms of said WORLD DOMINATION and I'm starting to wonder if investors are losing their edge. There's plenty of opportunity for truly revolutionary disruption in all sorts of sectors. I just don't hear about it. As someone with disruptive ideals (but outside the valley) am I just being paranoid or is there really a problem?
- michaelochurch 14y agoI think the problem is that most of these VC-funded startups are seen as loaded to the hilt on one kind of risk (red-ocean grow-fast-or-die gambits) so they avoid all other kinds of innovation, which is why they are such uninspiring places if one looks at the actual work and culture. I know someone who's trying to run open allocation and his investors said "no", because they didn't want the added risk. VCs are swinging for the fences more than ever, but that means they're loading up on one kind of risk (rapid execution risk) and have no space for any others. At any rate, I think "world domination" is a pretty pathetic goal. Where are the companies that want to focus on excelling rather than simply "dominating" some market?
- RKoutnik 14y agoSo the issue is less risk-adversity and more focus on a certain "ideal" risk. Interesting. As to "world domination," it's more a joking term for startups that are creating a new product that intends to replace what the market currently has [0]. Imagine a product designed to replace college as we know it. Incredibly risky? Absolutely. Crazy payoff (in cash and actual change)? Just as absolutely. I just don't see these kinds of ideas anymore. Maybe we all forgot to remove our schlep blinders, maybe the community has been focusing elsewhere, maybe they exist and have been avoiding premature hype. Probably a mix of all three. [0] Think Google/Heroku, not more mobile apps/anything social media
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- ChuckMcM 14y agoPalo Alto has always been a 'university town' with respect to Stanford's presence there. It benefitted from professors who were both teaching and entrepreneurs, or nurturing ideas that came out of their labs into full grown companies. Berkeley has a similar vibe for similar reasons. Traditionally San Francisco has been an artistic and design hub but not an engineering focused environment. However, that is a great environment to create products which are distinguished primarily by their design. It's surprising however how dysfunctional the whole San Francisco political scene remains. One would hope that the influx of young workers and the tax base they represent would encourage improvements in the management processes in order to capture long term economic growth. Its not clear that will happen though. It makes me wonder how durable a decision to base your company in SF will be.
- GuiA 14y ago> South Bay is getting more expensive. Rentals at $2500 for 2 bedrooms in Mountain View and Palo Alto. East PA and Fremont continue to be cheap. Meanwhile, those of us living in the East Bay are somewhat happy with the price they're paying and the short length of their commute :)
- ahmadss 14y agoany recs on family friendly cities/towns in the east bay for those looking to move out to bay area soon? my wife and i plan on working in SF proper. her firms SF office is located near embarcadero BART, and i'm still looking for a gig.
- rdouble 14y agoKensington, Alameda, Albany.
- malyk 14y agoAll of them? I guess the big question is schools, which I know nothing about. But if you stay away from the worst parts of oakland than I think almost any east bay city would be pretty good. My wife and I live in North Oakland and we think it's very nice. It's certainly not white yuppie suburbia, but it's also not dirty run down violent west oakland. If you want something more towards the former then you probably want to look in places like the berkeley or oakland hills, rockridge, peidmont, walnut creek, etc. Basically things along Rt 24.
- Domenic_S 14y ago> All of them? Hmm, don't agree here. East Bay cities I don't find particularly family-friendly: Berkeley (except for the hills $$$), Oakland (except for the hills $$$), Emeryville, Richmond, Concord, Antioch, Pittsburg, Brentwood, basically the whole north 4 corridor.
- malyk 14y agoI guess I don't really know what family friendly means. This whole area is muti bedroom houses with yards. There are parks scattered around. The one question, which I acknowledge knowing nothing about, is schools. What does "family friendly" mean? I shudder to think that it has to be your typical suburbia. There's so much more to offer than a sheltered back yard where your shuttled from strip mall to strip mall to practice field in a car.
- moystard 14y agoMy apologies if the answer is obvious, but why does he mention Mailbox?
- rgbrenner 14y agoThe sentence is "HYPE is now a subject of discussion. MailBox as an example." What is Mailbox (from wikipedia): Weeks before its launch, pre-registration prompted a wait list of over 380,000. Mailbox was added to the iOS App Store on Thursday, February 7, 2013; it became the second most downloaded free app in the App Store that day In March 2013, Mailbox was acquired by Dropbox Inc. So: they hyped up their app, and were able to exit less than a month after launch.
- whiteshadow 14y agoSo, when he says that HYPE is subject of discussion, that means that other companies are looking at this factor as a winning factor? What is your reading on that?
- moystard 14y agoInteresting, thank you.
- moystard 14y agoInteresting, thank you.
- coin 14y agoFunky horizontal scrolling on an iPad, pretty much unreadable.
- lucian303 14y ago"Startup employees don’t make as much cash as I thought it would be. And that shouldn’t be the perspective." True. There are few reasons to work at a startup that won't pay and playing the lottery seems to be the all-time favorite. Gold Rush indeed. Now if only the 49'ers could win a Super Bowl. No one else is winning in these conditions.