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> The hackers and designers that startups want to hire seem to be disproportionately likely to want to travel on foot or by bike Startups clustered first in th

by mapgrep 13y ago

> The hackers and designers that startups want to hire seem to be disproportionately likely to want to travel on foot or by bike Startups clustered first in the aggressively car-centric suburbs of Silicon Valley and in large part remain there. Even the YC offices are a long slog from Caltrain, on foot through big streets clogged with cars and parking lots. If Mountain View can attract startups why can't LA? I don't even agree with these jaywalking fines but there seem to be at least as many car lovers among my startup friends as my writer pals. (More, actually, when you factor in all the friends who live in NY.)

jrockway 13y ago
Mountain View is pretty bike-friendly, and even won some sort of award for being so. (According to some sign I saw while biking in Mountain View.) It's no Portland, but drivers seem pretty attentive. Of course, I bet the average Mountain View startup founder owns a car.
pg 13y ago
Actually Palo Alto is an exceptionally bike-friendly place. I wouldn't live in a town that wasn't. I've never seen a town in the US where a higher percentage of students bicycled to school, or serious cycling was a hobby of more adults. (Bicycling has for years been the cool sport among VCs, for example.) And as for YC, it's less than a mile from the Caltrain, in weather that is almost always dry and warm, mostly along roads that are pretty empty of cars. A lot of the founders we fund never get cars during the 3 month cycle, because they can get everywhere by bike and Caltrain.
- mjn 13y ago
  Palo Also is comparatively good for its area, but bicycling's modal share among commute options even there is quite low, hovering around 10%. Partly that's because many people who live in Palo Alto work elsewhere, and vice versa. In other cities on the peninsula it doesn't even crack 5%; nearly everyone who lives or works in Santa Clara or Sunnyvale drives, for example (biking's modal share is <2%). Mountain View is somewhere in between, at ~6%. Those numbers aren't inconsistent with it being possible to bike in those cities, but they suggest that people in practice don't. Here's a map: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bike/8007583135/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bike/8007583135/ Infrastructurally, it's quite noticeable as well. The Valley doesn't feel like a bike- or pedstrian-friendly place, but like a place criss-crossed by huge roads, giant parking lots, and not only interstates and state freeways, but county expressways, something I've rarely seen elsewhere (apparently the Peninsula opted out of BART and took the money that would've been spent there, to build abominations like the San Tomas and Lawrence expressways, instead). I remember walking from Mountain View Caltrain to the Microsoft campus on La Avenida once for a SuperHappyDevHouse, and it clearly did not seem like a route anyone ever expected a pedestrian to walk on.
- mapgrep 13y ago
  YC is great locationwise :) And there are some great startups within a couple blocks of MV Caltrain. I was just trying to make the point that even in a car-centric place you can have good startups. To an SF worker it seems kinda miraculous that the Valley proper, with its relatively weak mass transit, is still such a startup hub. So I tend to give LA the benefit of the doubt in terms of startups vs transport. And yes Palo Alto > LA for sure. I wish the whole Valley were a little more like Palo Alto.

by mapgrep 13y ago

jrockway 13y ago

Mountain View is pretty bike-friendly, and even won some sort of award for being so. (According to some sign I saw while biking in Mountain View.) It's no Portland, but drivers seem pretty attentive. Of course, I bet the average Mountain View startup founder owns a car.

pg 13y ago

Actually Palo Alto is an exceptionally bike-friendly place. I wouldn't live in a town that wasn't. I've never seen a town in the US where a higher percentage of students bicycled to school, or serious cycling was a hobby of more adults. (Bicycling has for years been the cool sport among VCs, for example.) And as for YC, it's less than a mile from the Caltrain, in weather that is almost always dry and warm, mostly along roads that are pretty empty of cars. A lot of the founders we fund never get cars during the 3 month cycle, because they can get everywhere by bike and Caltrain.

mjn 13y ago
Palo Also is comparatively good for its area, but bicycling's modal share among commute options even there is quite low, hovering around 10%. Partly that's because many people who live in Palo Alto work elsewhere, and vice versa. In other cities on the peninsula it doesn't even crack 5%; nearly everyone who lives or works in Santa Clara or Sunnyvale drives, for example (biking's modal share is <2%). Mountain View is somewhere in between, at ~6%. Those numbers aren't inconsistent with it being possible to bike in those cities, but they suggest that people in practice don't. Here's a map: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bike/8007583135/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bike/8007583135/ Infrastructurally, it's quite noticeable as well. The Valley doesn't feel like a bike- or pedstrian-friendly place, but like a place criss-crossed by huge roads, giant parking lots, and not only interstates and state freeways, but county expressways, something I've rarely seen elsewhere (apparently the Peninsula opted out of BART and took the money that would've been spent there, to build abominations like the San Tomas and Lawrence expressways, instead). I remember walking from Mountain View Caltrain to the Microsoft campus on La Avenida once for a SuperHappyDevHouse, and it clearly did not seem like a route anyone ever expected a pedestrian to walk on.
mapgrep 13y ago
YC is great locationwise :) And there are some great startups within a couple blocks of MV Caltrain. I was just trying to make the point that even in a car-centric place you can have good startups. To an SF worker it seems kinda miraculous that the Valley proper, with its relatively weak mass transit, is still such a startup hub. So I tend to give LA the benefit of the doubt in terms of startups vs transport. And yes Palo Alto > LA for sure. I wish the whole Valley were a little more like Palo Alto.