Sam Altman: Bay Area is no longer the obvious place for startups • Hacker News Board

Re: Sam Altman: Bay Area is no longer the obvious place for startups

#111

Post by burlesona » Sat, Feb 23, 2019, 7:25 AM UTC

randomacct3847 wrote: post #94

enra wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think for many people it comes down to go exactly where and do exactly what there. Once lived in Bay Area for while, you have certain expectations on compensation, services, things to do, career growth etc. If you are used to a city like SF and enjoy the level of things in there, in the world and US there only few cities similar. Like nyc, la, London, Tokyo etc. Portland, Seattle, Austin, Berlin are all good but no…

It’s not just cost of living but taxes. Living in a state with no income tax is an automatic 10-12% bump in take home pay. Agree though if you’re single your living situation is more flexible and you can find a place for less than market rate here pretty easily. It’s once you get married and want kids that SF makes no sense for most people. Someone making 200k in Austin has a much much better quality of life than som…

As someone from Austin living in SF I disagree. Austin has better housing affordability and less severe homelessness. To me, just about everything else is nicer in SF. But more to the point, everyone is different and you really can’t generalize about what place is better or worse, because people’s tastes, interests, and logistics vary so widely.

Re: Sam Altman: Bay Area is no longer the obvious place for startups

#112

Post by Johnny555 » Sat, Feb 23, 2019, 7:31 AM UTC

sytelus wrote: post #103

vincentmarle wrote: post #79

> I still expect a significant % of the $10B+ startups will get created here, so it makes sense for investors to still focus here. But I bet a lot of the ~$100M startups will happen elsewhere. > There are still some things—e.g great startup executive talent, particular kinds of engineering talent—that are much harder to find outside the bay area. This is spot on and it becomes a real bottle neck if you want to scale…

Why doesn’t your employees move out of Bay Area with you? Assuming if you keep offering same comp, this would cut down mortgage expenses to half and even gain much better housing in better school areas. It should be no brainer to move out if comp remains same. So you can come in to shop for talent, have them work remotely until they are ready. No need to open expensive offices in Bay Area.

I think part of the reason is the same reason companies stay in the Bay Area -- companies are in the Bay Area because they can find lots of good engineers in the area. Engineers like the area because they can find lots of good companies that want to hire them. No startup is guaranteed to survive, and if you move to Idaho with your company and it fails, it can be difficult to move back to the Bay Area.

Re: Sam Altman: Bay Area is no longer the obvious place for startups

#113

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Feb 23, 2019, 7:32 AM UTC

dbish wrote: post #28

jameslk wrote: post #10

I see a bright future for products and services focused on remote team management

I agree, but quite a few people get lonely working remotely and not having a proper office to go into, and software won't solve that (at least not until VR presence or something of the sort is really good). I've managed great engineers who have complained about this and I haven't seen a good solution.

[deleted]

Re: Sam Altman: Bay Area is no longer the obvious place for startups

#114

Post by burlesona » Sat, Feb 23, 2019, 7:33 AM UTC

jameslk wrote: post #10

I see a bright future for products and services focused on remote team management

Remote isn’t a panacea. I worked remotes for about 8 years and then went back to a traditional office environment when I had kids. I liked remote, but I enjoy the office more, and it has been much nicer for my family. It’s often difficult for little kids to understand when a parent is working from home, or for a spouse to emotionally accept that “just help me for a second” is enough to disrupt work.

In my life, having that separation so I’m physically gone when I’m not available and then fully present and available when I’m home has made everyone a lot happier.

Before you go telling me I needed an office space or a cowork, I did have an office space, and for a while I tried coworking. Once you’re going to a cowork —- well, to me it’s more fun to just go to a nice office with your actual coworkers than it is to rent a desk with a bunch of strangers.

Re: Sam Altman: Bay Area is no longer the obvious place for startups

#115

Post by Johnny555 » Sat, Feb 23, 2019, 7:35 AM UTC

temp1928384 wrote: post #4

And 50% of people living in SF want to leave https://sf.curbed.com/2019/2/20/18233498/poll-2019-leaving-s...

I'd take that with a big grain of salt, I spent over a decade of my 20 years living in SF looking elsewhere to move to since I couldn't afford the real estate. So I'd be counted as one of the ones that want to leave, but I never left until finally I moved down the Peninsula.

Re: Sam Altman: Bay Area is no longer the obvious place for startups

#116

Post by BadassFractal » Sat, Feb 23, 2019, 7:37 AM UTC

vincentmarle wrote: post #79

> I still expect a significant % of the $10B+ startups will get created here, so it makes sense for investors to still focus here. But I bet a lot of the ~$100M startups will happen elsewhere. > There are still some things—e.g great startup executive talent, particular kinds of engineering talent—that are much harder to find outside the bay area. This is spot on and it becomes a real bottle neck if you want to scale…

Your likelihood of being in the 500M+ valuation bracket is so infinitesimally slim, that optimizing for that case is almost pointless.

Re: Sam Altman: Bay Area is no longer the obvious place for startups

#117

Post by burlesona » Sat, Feb 23, 2019, 7:37 AM UTC

tehlike wrote: post #7

wycs wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ideally a state without zoning laws or noncompetes. I can’t think of one.

austin looks like a good candidate to me. not sure about noncompetes, though.

Austin rent has gone through the roof, and they’ve got a strong nimby and zoning problem just like SF so it’s just going to get worse. It’s on the exact same track, just ten or so years behind.

Re: Sam Altman: Bay Area is no longer the obvious place for startups

#118

Post by randomacct3847 » Sat, Feb 23, 2019, 7:41 AM UTC

burlesona wrote: post #111

randomacct3847 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not just cost of living but taxes. Living in a state with no income tax is an automatic 10-12% bump in take home pay. Agree though if you’re single your living situation is more flexible and you can find a place for less than market rate here pretty easily. It’s once you get married and want kids that SF makes no sense for most people. Someone making 200k in Austin has a much much better quality of life than som…

As someone from Austin living in SF I disagree. Austin has better housing affordability and less severe homelessness. To me, just about everything else is nicer in SF. But more to the point, everyone is different and you really can’t generalize about what place is better or worse, because people’s tastes, interests, and logistics vary so widely.

Define nicer. To me housing affordability is a massive lever that drives quality of life. You can find a place for 300k in Austin (renovated) what would cost 1.5m in SF.

Re: Sam Altman: Bay Area is no longer the obvious place for startups

#119

Post by sytelus » Sat, Feb 23, 2019, 7:43 AM UTC

enra wrote: post #80

eanzenberg wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why dont they? Or are there 2 people willing to take the place of every person leaving?

I think for many people it comes down to go exactly where and do exactly what there. Once lived in Bay Area for while, you have certain expectations on compensation, services, things to do, career growth etc. If you are used to a city like SF and enjoy the level of things in there, in the world and US there only few cities similar. Like nyc, la, London, Tokyo etc. Portland, Seattle, Austin, Berlin are all good but no…

Let’s not discount weather. As pg had said, places with bad weather can cut opportunities in half (paraphrased). Think about all the time you didn’t go out because of bad weather. Those are the times you didn’t bump across some founder or partner or VC or new job.

Also, there is huge cultural aspect that is much harder to articulate. If you are young, you can find lots of peers arriving in office on roller blades or playing video games on Friday or going for long drives in weekend. You might not find this in NYC or Seattle mature companies. People often change employers like cloths and that’s perhaps good for cultural because you continuesly encounter new ideas, opportunities and people. There is much less fear about not able to find job and that allows to take risk in working at startups at peanuts salaries. In most other places it would be hard to find folks who had more than 2-3 employers in 30 years and even more harder to find people taking pay cuts to get job at risky companies.

Yet another aspect is that either people don’t have kids or married couples both work in tech. Because of tremendous numbers of tech companies it’s easy to find tech jobs for spouses. Once you have double income in tech, housing cost is not huge deal.

Re: Sam Altman: Bay Area is no longer the obvious place for startups

#120

Post by bryanrasmussen » Sat, Feb 23, 2019, 7:58 AM UTC

neonate wrote: post #89

vincentmarle wrote: post #79

> I still expect a significant % of the $10B+ startups will get created here, so it makes sense for investors to still focus here. But I bet a lot of the ~$100M startups will happen elsewhere. > There are still some things—e.g great startup executive talent, particular kinds of engineering talent—that are much harder to find outside the bay area. This is spot on and it becomes a real bottle neck if you want to scale…

> by dealing with all kinds of things that shouldn’t matter. Can you give some examples?

Obviously the things that shouldn't matter are the things that you would normally have all set up in your current location that you need to replicate when you move to a new one. Especially if you happen to move internationally.

So - things that shouldn't matter that you would have to do if you moved

Get New office.

Deal with people that need to staff new office because some of your people won't move. Hiring. If you don't do that then you get an office through some co-working solution and have to deal with whatever requirements there are there.

If international - visas etc.

If opening local bay area office but keeping your other offices setting up culture to be able to work together between two or more locations.

If opening bay area office but closing local dealing with people's issues about moving. For example I would never move to the U.S from Denmark, so I had a job opportunity from a startup that was making the move right at the time and I said no. If I had been hired 6 months before I would have of course refused to move, and they would have had to deal with that.