8 ms·

Why I Moved My Startup to Oakland

67 points by brennenHN 13y ago

yeahrightoak 13y ago
Did you factor in the risk of dying when you made this decision? This kid is naive.
- alaskamiller 13y ago
  Yeah, folks, living and working in Oakland is literally a death sentence. Don't come here.
  - tfigueroa 13y ago
    Indeed - my colleagues and I, here at Pandora, are murdered here regularly. But that's what happens when you try to run a tech company here.
- iancmyers 13y ago
  Risk of dying? Have you even been to Oakland? The area around Jack London Square is just as safe, if not safer than many of the parts of SOMA where startups setup shop.
- mmanfrin 13y ago
  Do you know anything about the crime in Oakland beyond the superficial 'oh man there is a lot of crime in Oakland!'? Most of the crime is isolated to a few specific areas. You realize there's a lot of crime in SF, too, right? And that crime is concentrated in the areas where a lot of startups have their offices (e.g. the Fidi). Do you factor that in to your search when you look for a job in the City?
  - cadwag 13y ago
    New user + clear flamebait = obvious troll. Let's not go about feeding them unnecessarily. Just downvote and move along. The lack of responses would hurt way more than any clear appeals to logic, I assure you.
- dllthomas 13y ago
  That depends greatly on where in Oakland.
  - deleted 13y ago
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- deleted 13y ago
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- jessepollak 13y ago
  Yeah, you're naive. Yes, there are slightly more violent crimes in Oakland than San Francisco (and there's more property crime in San Frnacisco)[1], but on the whole they are pretty equivalent in terms of safety; especially if you stick to the 'nicer' areas of both. [1] http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Crime-up-in-Oakland-much-of-Bay-Area-4573391.php http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Crime-up-in-Oakland-much...
  - robbyking 13y ago
    Oakland has the 3rd highest violent crime rate per capita in the country: http://www.businessinsider.com/most-dangerous-cities-in-america-2013-6?op=1 http://www.businessinsider.com/most-dangerous-cities-in-amer... And according to the link you posted, Oakland has less than half the population of San Francisco, but 37% more violent crime.
    - dllthomas 13y ago
      Parts of Oakland are terrible, but Oakland is flippin' huge.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- yapcguy 13y ago
  Why the downvotes for the poster? Most of San Francisco is safe, with just one or two neighborhoods being dodgy. Most of Oakland is unsafe, with just one or two neighborhoods being safe. Oakland is one of the most dangerous cities in the USA. Just because you live there and haven't been gunned down yet, doesn't mean it's not happening to many other people. It's literally your life, so do your own research and don't listen to me or anybody else.
  - smtddr 13y ago
    Please HN'ers, ignore these people. These comments have confirmed a pattern I've been seeing on various websites' comment-section. <BIGconspiracyhat> Any attempts to show Oakland, Africa or African-americans in any kind of positive light or as victims will always, _ALWAYS_, get troll'ish/meta/hyper-pedantic comments that derail the main topic and/or meaningful discourse of the subject at hand, completely blowing up the comment threads. It works well on places like HN because almost everyone here likes to debate & discuss. But their arguments will become so spacious that you'll need 5 screen-lengths to debate with them and thus ruining the comments for anyone else who actually wanted to talk about the article. </BIGconspiracyhat> Please let's ignore these guys. We know they're wrong, no point debating with them. We'll never convince them and the comments will get bloated with arguments back-in-forth about crime stats, someone will eventually use the "R" word and then BOOM, all meaningful discussion nullified by 5+ pages of of debate about some non-significant detail. Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6365495 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6365495 NOTE: An idea for the comment section, a way for users to flag a thread as "superfluous". If it gets enough of these, the whole thread is moved off to a small link on the side labeled "Superfluous thread started by $USER" where clicking on it give you a little scrollable window to view it and easily dismiss it when you're satisfied the thread had no real value. Perhaps each user's profile even shows how many superfluous threads were credited to him/her.
    - yapcguy 13y ago
      This is about Oakland, why bring race into it? If the original poster had moved his startup to Stockton, we would be having the same conversation.
- tjbiddle 13y ago
  You're getting downvotes because of how you phrased your comment - but the base point is still there. I've driven to Oakland once, and it was to pick up a friend after he missed a connection on BART - Within that 30 minute window of me driving to pick him up he was nearly mugged by a group of 3, jumped in a black windowless van as an escape route - and somehow managed to have that driver be an ex-taxi driver who noticed he was in trouble. There's obviously some more dangerous, and some safer areas of the city - but it's still known as having an extremely high crime rate.
venportman 13y ago
If you want me to leave Fruitvale to take the Bart to SF, you better be paying me to do so.
- smtddr 13y ago
  INFO: https://www.commuterdirect.com/cdimages/commutercheck.jpg https://www.commuterdirect.com/cdimages/commutercheck.jpg Companies, especially tech, in SF usually offer these cards. I think it's the law'ish. It's a mix between the company straight giving you money + pretax deductions. I have the purely company-paid-for option, it covers about 10 days of me going from Concord to montgomery and back.
drags 13y ago
It's easier to make this work when the company is smaller. One of the big advantages of SF (and especially the financial district) is that it's possible for most people in the city, the East Bay _and_ the South Bay to get to work in less than an hour. I want to make the commute decent for as many employees as possible.
- timr 13y ago
  "It's easier to make this work when the company is smaller." Oh jeez. The way people talk about it now, you'd think that San Francisco was some sort of eternal pre-requisite for founding a startup, rather than the flavor of the moment. Startups didn't want to be here until a few years ago, and it isn't exactly a practically motivated decision today. Startups get founded here mostly because a certain subset of 20-somethings want to live in the city.
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  - canterburry 13y ago
    That cracks me up too. nothing has convinced me more that you can be successful outside of the valley than coming to the valley.
  - wildgift 13y ago
    I don't know what SF is like now, but CNet, Wired, Craigslist, and a few other companies started out there. There was also Hyperreal and SF.NET, the ravers, and Mondo 2000 up in Berkeley too. Maybe it wasn't the same kind of startup or the same people, but there it was. Anyway, I was almost instantly burned out on that hype almost before it happened. It wasn't the tech but the whole utopianism that was tiresome. Technoids in fantasy land. Ugh. I couldn't afford SF and liked Oakland a lot more, especially Chinatown and the area around the lake, and the swap meets, and the tiny computer stores. The Black culture, southern culture, Black Muslims, all that was new to me. The crime, not so cool, but whatever. SF had hella crime too. I guess my old San Francisco and old Oakland are no more.
jchrisa 13y ago
We started in Oakland and it was great from a community and creativity perspective.
- jessepollak 13y ago
  Did y'all move away? If so, would you mind giving a little insight into why?
spo81rty 13y ago
Why not just not partake in all of these startup events and meetings instead of moving? I have the same opinions as the author about all the startup noise and groupies here in KC. Which is why I avoid most of them.
- brennenHN 13y ago
  This is a good question, and I have two answers. 1) You are paying a high premium in San Francisco for the privilege of that stuff and it's simply not worth it. 2) The culture is pretty affected by the echoing and it gets kind of hard to escape. For example, going out to bars people frequently start conversations with things like "what startup do you work for"
  - 7Figures2Commas 13y ago
    The fun will really begin when the question becomes "What startup did you work for?" Those conversations are a lot more interesting.
jaredhansen 13y ago
Welcome! Breezy's been based in Oakland since starting in 2009 (or 2011 if you prefer to count from initial funding), and it's great. There are more people than you might think who are happy to live and work here here, and you just can't beat the rent or the weather. Feel free to swing by sometime and say hello - we're always happy to meet others in the small club that is the Oakland startup world.
- brennenHN 13y ago
  Awesome! Definitely will do.
- melange 13y ago
  Actually the rent is rapidly going through the roof, so don't expect it to last long.
- fourstar 13y ago
  Another fellow Oaklander checking in here (working in Mountain View though). You, myself, and Jared should all get a beer sometime (and whoever else).
xen99 13y ago
Why not move to Baghdad when you're at it?
chudi 13y ago
I'm not from San Francisco and never been into, but I cant understand how is this something important. Oakland is a bridge away from SF, is there a real change?
- aaroneous 13y ago
  In terms of diversity, socioeconomics, density and weather: absolutely.
- seldo 13y ago
  I live in the Mission, and I agree with you. Oakland is 30 minutes away from SF. This is like moving to South San Francisco and claiming it makes a makes a substantial difference to your business. You're still in the middle of the bay area.
- tjbiddle 13y ago
  You'd be amazed at how attached to the city some people are here. Not to say that's a bad thing - but it's definitely obvious.
avty 13y ago
Move to Texas!
Apocryphon 13y ago
There was a story last week about a startup moving to Berkeley. At this rate, there will be startups in Vallejo to revitalize that city's economy.
guelo 13y ago
Yea, the gentrification is spilling over from SF to the east bay. Long time residents are being pushed out while "beer gardens" and other businesses that cater to 20-something yuppies are popping up all over.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- Apocryphon 13y ago
  What's there after Oakland. Richmond?
benblodgett 13y ago
Let me start by saying I like the sentiment here. The hardest thing about living in NYC is knowing too many people. They distract you and give a false sense of comfort towards your situation. I get that. But, I have a problem with this, is moving an hour outside of a city really relocating? I'd argue if you don't want to be comfortable move to a city where you have no connections. Focus on somewhere not particularly welcoming to tech entrepreneurs and really get out of the comfort zone. Otherwise, I don't think you really moved your startup anywhere.
- wildgift 13y ago
  LOL, yeah, move to Fresno or Kern County.
VonGuard 13y ago
As a long time resident of Oakland, I'd like to relate some awesome things about Oakland, none of which the author touched on. Well, I guess the diversity and "Real-ness" count. Oakland is a hell of a lot cheaper to live in. Groceries, restaurants, rent, drinks, office space, hotel rooms, air fare: everything is cheaper. In Oakland, we have a burgeoning uptown scene, punctuated by the Art Murmur, an event which started in 2005, and has blossomed into a giant street festival that very accurately reflects the diversity of Oakland. It's a First Friday roll call for the city, and the Bay Area. That "Beer Garden" mentioned elsewhere, was a hipster coffee shop before that, and a cheap cafe before that, all willingly handed with great care from owner to owner. Gentrification has room to spread in Oakland, so while some complain about it, it mostly removes empty lots and vacant windows, not mom and pop businesses. The Mission, on the other hand, sees gentrification at the cost of existing businesses. And speaking of the Mission, Oakland's Fruitvale district is the cheapest, most active place you can live for under 4 figures, while still being 30 minutes from downtown SF via BART or car. Fruitvale has become quite the destination, for the adventurous. I could go on: The Chapel of Chimes is a Julia Morgan masterpiece, a labyrinth of death located in the hills. The Rose garden has a resident turkey. There's a couple breweries that host quiet BBQ's, Jack London Square, the various parks in the hills. The Hills.... The Fox and the Paramount. Van Kleefs. And my own personal favorite: http://www.themade.org http://www.themade.org

67 points by brennenHN 13y ago

yeahrightoak 13y ago

Did you factor in the risk of dying when you made this decision? This kid is naive.

alaskamiller 13y ago
Yeah, folks, living and working in Oakland is literally a death sentence. Don't come here.
- tfigueroa 13y ago
  Indeed - my colleagues and I, here at Pandora, are murdered here regularly. But that's what happens when you try to run a tech company here.
iancmyers 13y ago
Risk of dying? Have you even been to Oakland? The area around Jack London Square is just as safe, if not safer than many of the parts of SOMA where startups setup shop.
mmanfrin 13y ago
Do you know anything about the crime in Oakland beyond the superficial 'oh man there is a lot of crime in Oakland!'? Most of the crime is isolated to a few specific areas. You realize there's a lot of crime in SF, too, right? And that crime is concentrated in the areas where a lot of startups have their offices (e.g. the Fidi). Do you factor that in to your search when you look for a job in the City?
- cadwag 13y ago
  New user + clear flamebait = obvious troll. Let's not go about feeding them unnecessarily. Just downvote and move along. The lack of responses would hurt way more than any clear appeals to logic, I assure you.
dllthomas 13y ago
That depends greatly on where in Oakland.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
jessepollak 13y ago
Yeah, you're naive. Yes, there are slightly more violent crimes in Oakland than San Francisco (and there's more property crime in San Frnacisco)[1], but on the whole they are pretty equivalent in terms of safety; especially if you stick to the 'nicer' areas of both. [1] http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Crime-up-in-Oakland-much-of-Bay-Area-4573391.php http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Crime-up-in-Oakland-much...
- robbyking 13y ago
  Oakland has the 3rd highest violent crime rate per capita in the country: http://www.businessinsider.com/most-dangerous-cities-in-america-2013-6?op=1 http://www.businessinsider.com/most-dangerous-cities-in-amer... And according to the link you posted, Oakland has less than half the population of San Francisco, but 37% more violent crime.
  - dllthomas 13y ago
    Parts of Oakland are terrible, but Oakland is flippin' huge.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
yapcguy 13y ago
Why the downvotes for the poster? Most of San Francisco is safe, with just one or two neighborhoods being dodgy. Most of Oakland is unsafe, with just one or two neighborhoods being safe. Oakland is one of the most dangerous cities in the USA. Just because you live there and haven't been gunned down yet, doesn't mean it's not happening to many other people. It's literally your life, so do your own research and don't listen to me or anybody else.
- smtddr 13y ago
  Please HN'ers, ignore these people. These comments have confirmed a pattern I've been seeing on various websites' comment-section. <BIGconspiracyhat> Any attempts to show Oakland, Africa or African-americans in any kind of positive light or as victims will always, _ALWAYS_, get troll'ish/meta/hyper-pedantic comments that derail the main topic and/or meaningful discourse of the subject at hand, completely blowing up the comment threads. It works well on places like HN because almost everyone here likes to debate & discuss. But their arguments will become so spacious that you'll need 5 screen-lengths to debate with them and thus ruining the comments for anyone else who actually wanted to talk about the article. </BIGconspiracyhat> Please let's ignore these guys. We know they're wrong, no point debating with them. We'll never convince them and the comments will get bloated with arguments back-in-forth about crime stats, someone will eventually use the "R" word and then BOOM, all meaningful discussion nullified by 5+ pages of of debate about some non-significant detail. Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6365495 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6365495 NOTE: An idea for the comment section, a way for users to flag a thread as "superfluous". If it gets enough of these, the whole thread is moved off to a small link on the side labeled "Superfluous thread started by $USER" where clicking on it give you a little scrollable window to view it and easily dismiss it when you're satisfied the thread had no real value. Perhaps each user's profile even shows how many superfluous threads were credited to him/her.
  - yapcguy 13y ago
    This is about Oakland, why bring race into it? If the original poster had moved his startup to Stockton, we would be having the same conversation.
tjbiddle 13y ago
You're getting downvotes because of how you phrased your comment - but the base point is still there. I've driven to Oakland once, and it was to pick up a friend after he missed a connection on BART - Within that 30 minute window of me driving to pick him up he was nearly mugged by a group of 3, jumped in a black windowless van as an escape route - and somehow managed to have that driver be an ex-taxi driver who noticed he was in trouble. There's obviously some more dangerous, and some safer areas of the city - but it's still known as having an extremely high crime rate.

venportman 13y ago

If you want me to leave Fruitvale to take the Bart to SF, you better be paying me to do so.

smtddr 13y ago
INFO: https://www.commuterdirect.com/cdimages/commutercheck.jpg https://www.commuterdirect.com/cdimages/commutercheck.jpg Companies, especially tech, in SF usually offer these cards. I think it's the law'ish. It's a mix between the company straight giving you money + pretax deductions. I have the purely company-paid-for option, it covers about 10 days of me going from Concord to montgomery and back.

drags 13y ago

It's easier to make this work when the company is smaller. One of the big advantages of SF (and especially the financial district) is that it's possible for most people in the city, the East Bay _and_ the South Bay to get to work in less than an hour. I want to make the commute decent for as many employees as possible.

timr 13y ago
"It's easier to make this work when the company is smaller." Oh jeez. The way people talk about it now, you'd think that San Francisco was some sort of eternal pre-requisite for founding a startup, rather than the flavor of the moment. Startups didn't want to be here until a few years ago, and it isn't exactly a practically motivated decision today. Startups get founded here mostly because a certain subset of 20-somethings want to live in the city.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- canterburry 13y ago
  That cracks me up too. nothing has convinced me more that you can be successful outside of the valley than coming to the valley.
- wildgift 13y ago
  I don't know what SF is like now, but CNet, Wired, Craigslist, and a few other companies started out there. There was also Hyperreal and SF.NET, the ravers, and Mondo 2000 up in Berkeley too. Maybe it wasn't the same kind of startup or the same people, but there it was. Anyway, I was almost instantly burned out on that hype almost before it happened. It wasn't the tech but the whole utopianism that was tiresome. Technoids in fantasy land. Ugh. I couldn't afford SF and liked Oakland a lot more, especially Chinatown and the area around the lake, and the swap meets, and the tiny computer stores. The Black culture, southern culture, Black Muslims, all that was new to me. The crime, not so cool, but whatever. SF had hella crime too. I guess my old San Francisco and old Oakland are no more.

jchrisa 13y ago

We started in Oakland and it was great from a community and creativity perspective.

jessepollak 13y ago
Did y'all move away? If so, would you mind giving a little insight into why?

spo81rty 13y ago

Why not just not partake in all of these startup events and meetings instead of moving? I have the same opinions as the author about all the startup noise and groupies here in KC. Which is why I avoid most of them.

brennenHN 13y ago
This is a good question, and I have two answers. 1) You are paying a high premium in San Francisco for the privilege of that stuff and it's simply not worth it. 2) The culture is pretty affected by the echoing and it gets kind of hard to escape. For example, going out to bars people frequently start conversations with things like "what startup do you work for"
- 7Figures2Commas 13y ago
  The fun will really begin when the question becomes "What startup did you work for?" Those conversations are a lot more interesting.

jaredhansen 13y ago

Welcome! Breezy's been based in Oakland since starting in 2009 (or 2011 if you prefer to count from initial funding), and it's great. There are more people than you might think who are happy to live and work here here, and you just can't beat the rent or the weather. Feel free to swing by sometime and say hello - we're always happy to meet others in the small club that is the Oakland startup world.

brennenHN 13y ago
Awesome! Definitely will do.
melange 13y ago
Actually the rent is rapidly going through the roof, so don't expect it to last long.
fourstar 13y ago
Another fellow Oaklander checking in here (working in Mountain View though). You, myself, and Jared should all get a beer sometime (and whoever else).

xen99 13y ago

Why not move to Baghdad when you're at it?

chudi 13y ago

I'm not from San Francisco and never been into, but I cant understand how is this something important. Oakland is a bridge away from SF, is there a real change?

aaroneous 13y ago
In terms of diversity, socioeconomics, density and weather: absolutely.
seldo 13y ago
I live in the Mission, and I agree with you. Oakland is 30 minutes away from SF. This is like moving to South San Francisco and claiming it makes a makes a substantial difference to your business. You're still in the middle of the bay area.
tjbiddle 13y ago
You'd be amazed at how attached to the city some people are here. Not to say that's a bad thing - but it's definitely obvious.

avty 13y ago

Move to Texas!

Apocryphon 13y ago

There was a story last week about a startup moving to Berkeley. At this rate, there will be startups in Vallejo to revitalize that city's economy.

guelo 13y ago

Yea, the gentrification is spilling over from SF to the east bay. Long time residents are being pushed out while "beer gardens" and other businesses that cater to 20-something yuppies are popping up all over.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
Apocryphon 13y ago
What's there after Oakland. Richmond?

benblodgett 13y ago

Let me start by saying I like the sentiment here. The hardest thing about living in NYC is knowing too many people. They distract you and give a false sense of comfort towards your situation. I get that. But, I have a problem with this, is moving an hour outside of a city really relocating? I'd argue if you don't want to be comfortable move to a city where you have no connections. Focus on somewhere not particularly welcoming to tech entrepreneurs and really get out of the comfort zone. Otherwise, I don't think you really moved your startup anywhere.

wildgift 13y ago
LOL, yeah, move to Fresno or Kern County.

VonGuard 13y ago

As a long time resident of Oakland, I'd like to relate some awesome things about Oakland, none of which the author touched on. Well, I guess the diversity and "Real-ness" count. Oakland is a hell of a lot cheaper to live in. Groceries, restaurants, rent, drinks, office space, hotel rooms, air fare: everything is cheaper. In Oakland, we have a burgeoning uptown scene, punctuated by the Art Murmur, an event which started in 2005, and has blossomed into a giant street festival that very accurately reflects the diversity of Oakland. It's a First Friday roll call for the city, and the Bay Area. That "Beer Garden" mentioned elsewhere, was a hipster coffee shop before that, and a cheap cafe before that, all willingly handed with great care from owner to owner. Gentrification has room to spread in Oakland, so while some complain about it, it mostly removes empty lots and vacant windows, not mom and pop businesses. The Mission, on the other hand, sees gentrification at the cost of existing businesses. And speaking of the Mission, Oakland's Fruitvale district is the cheapest, most active place you can live for under 4 figures, while still being 30 minutes from downtown SF via BART or car. Fruitvale has become quite the destination, for the adventurous. I could go on: The Chapel of Chimes is a Julia Morgan masterpiece, a labyrinth of death located in the hills. The Rose garden has a resident turkey. There's a couple breweries that host quiet BBQ's, Jack London Square, the various parks in the hills. The Hills.... The Fox and the Paramount. Van Kleefs. And my own personal favorite: http://www.themade.org http://www.themade.org