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

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

#141
post #28
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.

Uhm just a random thing here, but people should look at how online gaming communities work. They solved that problem nearly 15 years ago...

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

#142
post #97
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Bay Area has less than 1/30th the US population and yet the majority of US unicorns and decacorns have hailed from here. It's wildly disproportionate.

Is this attributable to the quality of the startups or the easy access to capital?

In my experience, it is largely attributable to local culture. The intersection of high-quality engineering talent and ambition bordering on megalomania is quite rare, but you need it to build a strong tech-driven company. In the vast majority of places in the world, and even in much of the US, this is neither socially prevalent nor culturally accepted. You have this in the Bay Area and to a lesser extent Seattle, but not too many other places in my experience.

There are a number of cities around the world that have high-quality engineering talent in sufficient quantity, that part is easy to replicate. The complaint I consistently hear from startup founders across Europe (where I've worked) and in some parts of the US is that there is a broad and deep-seated lack of ambition or appetite to do very difficult engineering. The reasons for this are multi-faceted and complicated, so it isn't something that can be reduced to a soundbite or easily changed. The intensity of effort applied to technical problem solving that we take for granted on the west coast is very much not the default case most other places, and this is compounded by the relative lack of experience building high-performing engineering organizations.

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

#143
post #134

One thing to note. Since the time Bay Area became “expensive”, contrary to expectations it is actually crushing other geographies (exception being China) when it comes to massive fund raising for startups. Just this week Flexport raised $1bn and DoorDash raised $400mn. A few weeks back Nuro raised $1bn and Juul got $12bn. There is an excellent Crunchbase article on this https://news.crunchbase.com/news/how-northern-c…

I would consider fundraising and local cost of living to be completely orthogonal. Fundraising is easier when there is a cluster of potential donors in a central geography. Other important factors are regulatory environment, taxes, potential employees, transportation, and so forth.

I mentioned fundraising as a proxy for health of the startup sector in the Bay Area. The expectation was that with high cost of living and relentless FAANG hiring, startups will move en masse to other locations. But fundraising data suggests otherwise.

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

#144
post #28
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.

This is more and more of a myth, to the point where it rings outright false. Tons of people work remotely successfully and don't miss walking into an office building. Basic tooling and online presence suffice.

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

#145

> 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.

This already happens all the time when starting remote offices, but not when moving the HQ. Employees who aren't attached to SF life or open to change of environment are willing to make the move. The pay vs cost of living usually works in their favor too. Smaller startups usually hire remote or start second HQs to tap into and train cheaper engineers outside SF.

However, the post you're replying to was talking about larger startups moving INTO the bay area not out.

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

#147
post #28
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.

You can be lonely working in an office, too.

Most of my remote team has family and kids and remote work allows them to actually spend time with them and afford a house in a decent area.

Bay Area is great for single people and/or rich people basically.

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

#148
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, havin…

I think this is a really key point to consider with remote. I'm fortunate enough that I have a dedicated office space in my house I can use for remote work, but even then there's occasional issues with my kids not really understanding the difference between working and being available to play. If I was in shared space, it would be a nightmare.

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

#149

> 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.

So you're gonna trust your company will not lay you off in a year? What will you do after two years even if it didn't,? I doubt you'll continue to keep finding similar paying jobs in Dallas.

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

#150
post #51
post #45

I think it’s important for anyone getting to this page to read his whole thread, which is more nuanced than suggested by the sensational title. The point he seems to be making is that it’s better for startups that aren’t looking at being unicorns to look at other locations where they might have a better chance of success.

What's the point of being a startup not looking at being a unicorn? I genuinely do not understand how somebody can cap off their ambitions like so.

Some friends created a startup a few years ago. It is now profitable and never took VC.

The two founders pull down $1,000,000 a year and they give staff $50,000+ annual bonuses from profit sharing.

They also work four day weeks and spent every night and weekend with their kids.

What's the upside of trying to make it into a unicorn?

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