The Decline of Investment in San Francisco Startups • Hacker News Board

Re: The Decline of Investment in San Francisco Startups

#281

Post by stale2002 » Fri, Jul 21, 2017, 5:54 PM UTC

abalone wrote: post #166

vedanta wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are also YIMBY orgs almost everywhere. The south bay YIMBY twitter account has updates on what you can do as well. From following the YIMBY movement ( http://www.slate.com/articles/business/metropolis/2017/06/yi... ) it's hard to not take the YIMBY position. More needs to be built, but we can have ~10% BMR requirements as ways of increasing diversity in a neighborhood and preserving some local control/culture.…

10% is way low. SF has been negotiating for 25% and up.[1] BMR isn't just about culture and diversity. It's about teachers and service industry workers and everyone a functioning city needs. The gap is so large between market rate and affordability, and there are so many richer people still wanting to move into SF, that it is likely wishful thinking that market rate development will be "enough" to solve the problem.…

Instead of having BMR requirments, you could build so many houses that the new market prices are LESS than whatever the BMR requirements are.

Re: The Decline of Investment in San Francisco Startups

#282

Post by aphextron » Fri, Jul 21, 2017, 5:55 PM UTC

chrissnell wrote: post #69

fatbird wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People should give up. People should leave the area. They should move where they can find a job and a cost of living that's reasonable. The fact that people don't give up is why landlords can afford to charge $2,800/month for a 1 bedroom. You can't rent at $2,800/month if no one will sign the lease.

As someone living in the Midwest and telecommuting to SFBA, that's almost unbelievable to me. I pay less than that for my brand new and quite nice 5/4 house on almost half an acre of land. With all of the remote work available, why would you stay here? I manage a team with two remote-friendly job openings currently. You could work for me and go live in Telluride, CO for less than that East Bay 1br and still have mone…

>With all of the remote work available, why would you stay here?

As the other comments have said, remote work is extremely competitive, low paying, and unstable on the whole unfortunately.

It's either tough it out and deal with the gauntlet of traditional tech interviews and sky high rents in the Bay Area, or hustle your ass off 24/7 competing with the millions of new CS grads in India and China who are just as skilled as you (or more) and can work for $4/hr.

Re: The Decline of Investment in San Francisco Startups

#283

Post by trimbo » Fri, Jul 21, 2017, 6:12 PM UTC

ultimoo wrote: post #5

TL;DR: The investments are moving from the city proper to South Bay over the last 2-3 years. Mostly a good writeup backed by sufficient data points. If I may anecdotally share my observations, of the handful of people that I personally know who have founded Startups in 2016 and 2017 -- all of them are in their late 30s, and have dependents (spouse, children, pets). All of them currently live on the peninsula or in th…

> Add to that a lousy school system

We've had a reasonable experience in SFUSD. It seems like most parents are pretty happy with the quality of education, and many schools are highly rated (by third parties).

The problem with SFUSD is the horrendous lottery system. This is what drives people away.

They are now messing with the "funnel" plan they had set up for middle schools (no lottery for middle school, based on where you went to elementary). This has pushed at least two families I know off into private schools just in the past couple months.

Re: The Decline of Investment in San Francisco Startups

#284

Post by mmagin » Fri, Jul 21, 2017, 6:13 PM UTC

IMHO, you only get lots of startups in the city at the rising part of the cycle. When everyone's so desperate for talent they'll do anything to woo young engineers.

There are plenty of very good experienced engineers that have no tolerance for commuting up to SF every day in this traffic. And also, most of the VC firms are in the suburbs too :)

Re: The Decline of Investment in San Francisco Startups

#285

Post by dwg » Fri, Jul 21, 2017, 6:19 PM UTC

Perhaps ICO investments are not yet large enough to matter, but one would wonder if that is drawing away some of the money that would have otherwise been invested in the more traditional way measured by the article.

Re: The Decline of Investment in San Francisco Startups

#286

Post by marme » Fri, Jul 21, 2017, 6:23 PM UTC

abalone wrote: post #166

vedanta wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are also YIMBY orgs almost everywhere. The south bay YIMBY twitter account has updates on what you can do as well. From following the YIMBY movement ( http://www.slate.com/articles/business/metropolis/2017/06/yi... ) it's hard to not take the YIMBY position. More needs to be built, but we can have ~10% BMR requirements as ways of increasing diversity in a neighborhood and preserving some local control/culture.…

10% is way low. SF has been negotiating for 25% and up.[1] BMR isn't just about culture and diversity. It's about teachers and service industry workers and everyone a functioning city needs. The gap is so large between market rate and affordability, and there are so many richer people still wanting to move into SF, that it is likely wishful thinking that market rate development will be "enough" to solve the problem.…

BMR units should not be required by private developers. This is a public problem that private developers are being forced to solve and many are just refusing to build more housing because they cant make a profit. Instead of requiring them to build BMR units just require all apartments to rent out 25% of units to section 8 housing and the city can subsidize the rent of low income people. The more barriers to housing you put in the more developer leave the market. If you want BMR units then have the city build them and they can build 100% BMR complexes

Re: The Decline of Investment in San Francisco Startups

#287

Post by PretzelFisch » Fri, Jul 21, 2017, 6:24 PM UTC

kec wrote: post #264

vedanta wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prop 13 affects all of CA, you don't see prices in LA going up 100% in 3-5 years like you do in most south bay cities.

LA hasn't seen anything like the VC / tech boom that the bay area is currently in. Prop 13 reduces liquidity, but that doesn't automatically have an outsized effect on prices. It's only when a market is illiquid and there's a huge spike in demand that you see ridiculously negative effects like this.

True, but Seattle is seeing large increases in housing prices do to low inventory as well. Maybe it will play out different in the long term vs the bay area?

Re: The Decline of Investment in San Francisco Startups

#288

Post by dsfyu404ed » Fri, Jul 21, 2017, 6:35 PM UTC

kasey_junk wrote: post #161

jpao79 wrote: post #65

A few questions for HN: 1.) Do you think San Jose will ever become "a thing" for tech startups? Is there enough to do there? There is a WeWork and San Pedro Square in downtown San Jose. Or is a waterfront view what make San Francisco, Seattle and Portland what they are? Also, if you did want to live in San Jose there where are the up and coming places for HNers to live? 2.) Cupertino used to be cherry orchards and su…

> If housing was unconstrained in the Bay Area and at cost parity with the MidWest, wouldn't that remove any reason to live in the MidWest? That is hilarious. The Bay Area centrism to imply that there is no reason to live any where else besides cost is absolutely ludicrous.

There's some guys a few cubes over from me talking about how "Not for sale in California" is a marketable feature on engine powered equipment.

Re: The Decline of Investment in San Francisco Startups

#289

Post by rayiner » Fri, Jul 21, 2017, 6:35 PM UTC

amyjess wrote: post #144

Naritai wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you miss the part where BART is packed every commute hour? There are huge numbers of people in Oakland and the rest of the east bay. But the most efficient transportation system is one that doesn't have huge rush hour stresses, i.e. ones where people live close to where they work. So if the offices are getting built in SF, then so must be the housing.

> So if the offices are getting built in SF, This is the problem. Embrace edge cities, people. There's no reason to expect hundreds of thousands of people to commute to a downtown area. Scatter the businesses throughout the suburbs, dammit. Start locating new startups not just in Oakland but even farther out, in places such as Walnut Creek or Santa Rosa. Hell, maybe a tech influx could get the crime down in Stockton.

That's what you have in DC and it's a total clusterfuck. Nobody wants to move just because they change jobs, and spouses won't limit job choices just to be in the same suburb as each other. So you have people commuting in random directions through inter-suburb roads that weren't designed to handle it.

Re: The Decline of Investment in San Francisco Startups

#290

Post by x2398dh1 » Fri, Jul 21, 2017, 6:41 PM UTC

rl3 wrote: post #61

What are the best alternatives to the Bay Area? Off the top of my head I'm thinking Portland, Seattle, Boston, Austin and Chicago in no particular order. The annoying part is that there's so much talent concentrated in the Bay Area that it makes going elsewhere very difficult, especially if you have specific senior talent in mind that have already established their lives there. Hopefully telepresence tech gets so goo…

In my opinion:

1. Seattle 2. Boulder 3. Minneapolis 4. Austin

In each city, you have amazingly talented folks and wonderful opportunities to build against common everyday problems without a ton of competition. You can net the same amount that you would in Silicon Valley or San Fransisco if you play your cards right.