Landlords are trying not to rent to startups in San Francisco

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 9:59 PM UTC

meatysnapper wrote: post #13

mooreds wrote: post #7

Or, consider starting a company outside of San Francisco. Not just outside of SoMA, actually outside of San Francisco. (I know, I know, blasphemy.) Eventually the price of real estate and labor will be so high that the relative disadvantages of other locations will not matter.

I think the advantage of a massive skilled labor pool and investors within walking distance is a nearly insurmountable advantage. For a small company, I'd say the time/cost of hiring a few good engineers is way more than a few months rent. You'll certainly pay a respectable headhunter quite a bit.

Post by onedev » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 10:01 PM UTC

dataker wrote: post #39

While in SV, I couldn't understand the hate towards East Bay: it's fairly priced, close to the 'hub' and not as violent as otherwise portrayed. Could anyone elaborate?

Post by rdl » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 10:01 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #10

fredkbloggs wrote: post #3

This is a great analysis and the argument makes perfect sense in every respect. The only thing I find dubious is the idea that the bust is 2-4 years out. I think if you polled most SF commercial landlords, they would tell you that they expect most of their startup tenants to start having difficulty paying the rent in no more than 18 months. It would be interesting to see some actual data on this. After all, there's n…

Agreed, many landlords seem to feel like the trouble is a mere few months away, although often any attempt at getting them to discuss how they arrived at that conclusion gets something like "I just know it." So one wonders about the whole "wisdom of the crowds" or "herd" in this case, and whether or not they can sense something that isn't showing up in other indicators. I've been looking but other than the extensivel…

Post by ssalazar » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 10:03 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #33

stephengillie wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If all of your employees are remote, what do you show your investors, partners, board members, and creditors when they want a tour of your facility? How do you show them that you've got smart people working on hard problems? For some (bad?) startups, this is an even more valuable function of engineers than engineering.

Tell them that facilities are obsolete and if they don't want to become an obsolete dinosaur, they should jump on the remote-working trend before it eats the world. Then show them your Slack channel, git commit log, and issue tracker to introduce them to the new world. Some will probably leave, but then, they're dinosaurs anyway, and why would you want an investor who just doesn't get it?

Post by chrismarlow9 » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 10:06 PM UTC

meatysnapper wrote: post #13

mooreds wrote: post #7

Or, consider starting a company outside of San Francisco. Not just outside of SoMA, actually outside of San Francisco. (I know, I know, blasphemy.) Eventually the price of real estate and labor will be so high that the relative disadvantages of other locations will not matter.

I think the advantage of a massive skilled labor pool and investors within walking distance is a nearly insurmountable advantage. For a small company, I'd say the time/cost of hiring a few good engineers is way more than a few months rent. You'll certainly pay a respectable headhunter quite a bit.