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I disagree. The rising cost of living will have nothing but detrimental impact on startups. When $1m used to buy a year of runway, now it's $2m, and you're not

I disagree. The rising cost of living will have nothing but detrimental impact on startups. When $1m used to buy a year of runway, now it's $2m, and you're not really getting any more for your money, you're just making sure your engineers have a decent roof over their heads. Your theory is sound except for one little problem: the Bay Area's transportation system is fucked. FUCKED. Completely, utterly, irredeemably fucked. BART is a joke, MUNI is like a fevered bad dream, Caltrain woefully inadequate. So yeah, SOMA used to be urban blight, now it's urban blight with a bit of startups mixed in (seriously, go hang out at 6th/Mission for a bit). Rent (both residential and commercial) in SF is exploding, but there no more periphery, because nobody can reasonably get to said periphery. Oakland has been trying to steal some of SF's thunder for years, offering themselves as the more affordable alternative. This will never happen at scale, because of how utterly screwed transportation is. SF is out of space, and there's very little room for it to expand into, because nobody is willing to redevelop land, the the complete fuckery of a transportation network you have prevents effective expansion into anywhere that will let you develop. At some point the cost of living and operating needs to square with reality. At some point a startup board member is going to say "Holy fuck, you pay HOW MUCH for your office?"

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
_pius 13y ago
Your theory is sound except for one little problem: the Bay Area's transportation system is fucked. FUCKED. Completely, utterly, irredeemably fucked. BART is a joke, MUNI is like a fevered bad dream, Caltrain woefully inadequate. A little hyperbolic, I think.
- acchow 13y ago
  Bay Area mass transit is far from fucked. There's a lot of infrastructure there that, with minor upgrades, could massively improve the situation. Take BART, for example. Not enough trains. Upgrade the system to support more trains and then BUY MORE TRAINS. Suddenly living in Daly City and commuting to SF is feasible.
  - potatolicious 13y ago
    "Upgrade the system to support more trains" is easier said than done. For one thing, BART is running ancient rolling stock that's already well pasts its original designed service lifetime - the bulk of the fleet is now sixteen years over its original 25-year service life. The system breaks down frequently because of this, and over the years the system has lost enough cars (and cannibalized enough for parts) that there is no longer sufficient spare capacity to rotate into service when trains break down. Couple that with track and control design that does not permit bypasses, and you've got yourself a recipe for trouble. A train stuck in the tube cannot be bypassed - unlike other subway systems - and thus every single minor trouble cascades into a major cockup of everyone's day. So you have a system that is prone to magnifying small failures into big ones, and you combine that with trains that are way past their service life and running on proverbial fumes. Bonus also: BART hasn't purchased any new rolling stock in a very, very long time, and all of its rolling stock will come up to the end of their service lifetimes by 2019 (with 65% of the fleet already past service life). Instead of spreading the capital cost of new vehicles over decades, BART is now placed in a position where it needs to replace its 670+ car fleet in the span of about six years. In all likelihood this will mean even more of the fleet going into "beyond service life" territory and wreaking havoc on everyone's commute. BART can be improved. But before BART can be improved you first need to catch up on 20 years of complete neglect. It's billions of dollars that has no hope of ever getting spent in the current political and economic climate, and that's just to get BART to the point where it's reasonably good at accomplishing its current stated purpose. At that point you can think about expanding the system, increasing capacity beyond its current scope, etc etc. Actually, I just looked this up, the current plan is to phase in new vehicles beginning 2017, over a 15-20 year period. That's going to be quite a treat, considering even the newest trains in the current fleet will be 44 years old by the time BART is done with their rolling stock refresh - 18 years past its expected service life. Bonus also: large parts of BART track are actually substantially damaged, reducing speed and increasing noise (to unsafe levels, even). You can't hope to begin adding capacity until you fix this. Between the fleet, the antiquated control systems, and damaged track, BART doesn't need minor fixes, it needs deep overhauls of nearly every aspect of its infrastructure. MUNI isn't much better off: http://www.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/report-on-munis-light-rail-trains-is-latest-bad-news-for-agency/Content?oid=2350167 http://www.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/report-on-munis-light... Ancient equipment, ancient infrastructure, a fleet stretched thin to the breaking point, decades of under-funding and mismanagement, all of these descriptors apply just as much to MUNI (if not more) than to BART. The regional and city transportation infrastructure in the SF Bay Area is a complete mess. This is, unfortunately, not hyperbole. We are over a decade, and billions of dollars of additional spending, away from even restoring these transit systems to proper function, much less go after expanding their scope.
acchow 13y ago
Why does high cost of rent threaten the tech industry? Can't it just shift focus to Boston/Tel Aviv/Berlin/Toronto/etc?
- potatolicious 13y ago
  A loss of investor confidence does not necessarily mean the investment will shift to another tech hub. We saw during the first dot-bomb that loss of confidence simply led to money going into not-tech. Tech investment is, unfortunately, not a zero-sum game. Every dollar that doesn't go into a Silicon Valley tech company is not guaranteed to go into a tech company elsewhere. So yeah, the failure of SF/SV will probably mean an increase in tech investment in other cities, but ultimately I don't think there's a chance in hell we'll break even. It will be a huge net loss for the tech industry as a whole. Not to mention there isn't really a strong SF/Bay Area alternative when it comes to tech. I know Boston/Tel Aviv/Berlin/Toronto (add Montreal, Waterloo, NYC, Austin, and Seattle to the list for more completeness) like to hang up banners proclaiming themselves to be just like Silicon Valley, but let's be honest, the scale difference is enormous. None of the above listed cities are even close to being able to assume Silicon Valley's mantle. Even as someone who no longer lives in the area, who has no interest in returning to the area, the loss of the SF/Bay Area's status as the de facto tech capital of the world will have enormous negative repercussions.
  - acchow 13y ago
    > A loss of investor confidence What? We were talking about high rental costs in SF (probably implying high employee salaries). why does that affect investor confidence?

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

_pius 13y ago

Your theory is sound except for one little problem: the Bay Area's transportation system is fucked. FUCKED. Completely, utterly, irredeemably fucked. BART is a joke, MUNI is like a fevered bad dream, Caltrain woefully inadequate. A little hyperbolic, I think.

acchow 13y ago
Bay Area mass transit is far from fucked. There's a lot of infrastructure there that, with minor upgrades, could massively improve the situation. Take BART, for example. Not enough trains. Upgrade the system to support more trains and then BUY MORE TRAINS. Suddenly living in Daly City and commuting to SF is feasible.
- potatolicious 13y ago
  "Upgrade the system to support more trains" is easier said than done. For one thing, BART is running ancient rolling stock that's already well pasts its original designed service lifetime - the bulk of the fleet is now sixteen years over its original 25-year service life. The system breaks down frequently because of this, and over the years the system has lost enough cars (and cannibalized enough for parts) that there is no longer sufficient spare capacity to rotate into service when trains break down. Couple that with track and control design that does not permit bypasses, and you've got yourself a recipe for trouble. A train stuck in the tube cannot be bypassed - unlike other subway systems - and thus every single minor trouble cascades into a major cockup of everyone's day. So you have a system that is prone to magnifying small failures into big ones, and you combine that with trains that are way past their service life and running on proverbial fumes. Bonus also: BART hasn't purchased any new rolling stock in a very, very long time, and all of its rolling stock will come up to the end of their service lifetimes by 2019 (with 65% of the fleet already past service life). Instead of spreading the capital cost of new vehicles over decades, BART is now placed in a position where it needs to replace its 670+ car fleet in the span of about six years. In all likelihood this will mean even more of the fleet going into "beyond service life" territory and wreaking havoc on everyone's commute. BART can be improved. But before BART can be improved you first need to catch up on 20 years of complete neglect. It's billions of dollars that has no hope of ever getting spent in the current political and economic climate, and that's just to get BART to the point where it's reasonably good at accomplishing its current stated purpose. At that point you can think about expanding the system, increasing capacity beyond its current scope, etc etc. Actually, I just looked this up, the current plan is to phase in new vehicles beginning 2017, over a 15-20 year period. That's going to be quite a treat, considering even the newest trains in the current fleet will be 44 years old by the time BART is done with their rolling stock refresh - 18 years past its expected service life. Bonus also: large parts of BART track are actually substantially damaged, reducing speed and increasing noise (to unsafe levels, even). You can't hope to begin adding capacity until you fix this. Between the fleet, the antiquated control systems, and damaged track, BART doesn't need minor fixes, it needs deep overhauls of nearly every aspect of its infrastructure. MUNI isn't much better off: http://www.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/report-on-munis-light-rail-trains-is-latest-bad-news-for-agency/Content?oid=2350167 http://www.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/report-on-munis-light... Ancient equipment, ancient infrastructure, a fleet stretched thin to the breaking point, decades of under-funding and mismanagement, all of these descriptors apply just as much to MUNI (if not more) than to BART. The regional and city transportation infrastructure in the SF Bay Area is a complete mess. This is, unfortunately, not hyperbole. We are over a decade, and billions of dollars of additional spending, away from even restoring these transit systems to proper function, much less go after expanding their scope.

acchow 13y ago

Why does high cost of rent threaten the tech industry? Can't it just shift focus to Boston/Tel Aviv/Berlin/Toronto/etc?

potatolicious 13y ago
A loss of investor confidence does not necessarily mean the investment will shift to another tech hub. We saw during the first dot-bomb that loss of confidence simply led to money going into not-tech. Tech investment is, unfortunately, not a zero-sum game. Every dollar that doesn't go into a Silicon Valley tech company is not guaranteed to go into a tech company elsewhere. So yeah, the failure of SF/SV will probably mean an increase in tech investment in other cities, but ultimately I don't think there's a chance in hell we'll break even. It will be a huge net loss for the tech industry as a whole. Not to mention there isn't really a strong SF/Bay Area alternative when it comes to tech. I know Boston/Tel Aviv/Berlin/Toronto (add Montreal, Waterloo, NYC, Austin, and Seattle to the list for more completeness) like to hang up banners proclaiming themselves to be just like Silicon Valley, but let's be honest, the scale difference is enormous. None of the above listed cities are even close to being able to assume Silicon Valley's mantle. Even as someone who no longer lives in the area, who has no interest in returning to the area, the loss of the SF/Bay Area's status as the de facto tech capital of the world will have enormous negative repercussions.
- acchow 13y ago
  > A loss of investor confidence What? We were talking about high rental costs in SF (probably implying high employee salaries). why does that affect investor confidence?