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Landlords are trying not to rent to startups in San Francisco

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Re: Landlords are trying not to rent to startups in San Francisco

#171

Post by justinator »

czbond wrote: post #134
Osiris wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ZenPayroll is opening a Denver, CO office, looking to hire 100 people[1]. [1] http://fortune.com/2015/07/28/zenpayroll-jobs-denver-colorad...

Boulder is an incredibly difficult market to hire in. I was talkign to the head of Google Boulder when he mentioned they can't even get engineers hired there.

Living in Boulder, I'm curious as to why?

I'm seeing the other side of the coin, where getting hired is proving very difficult. The joke here is even the dirtbag climbers have PHDs.

Re: Landlords are trying not to rent to startups in San Francisco

#172

Post by dannyr »

jerrac wrote: post #123
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 wish people would do that. I know when I see jobs that interest me, they're almost always in SF or NYC. Neither location is somewhere I'd flourish. Seriously, what is the actual appeal of SF? I just don't see it.

How much time have you actually spent in SF?

As an SF Bay Area resident since 2009, there's no better place if you want a career in tech.

Yes, you can still have a great career outside of SF but it's a lot easier here.

I have lived and worked in 4 US cities and the best engineers are here. The selection of good jobs is immense. If you are a decent engineer, you have so many choices.

Re: Landlords are trying not to rent to startups in San Francisco

#173

Post by scarmig »

fredkbloggs wrote: post #137
khuey wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens if those areas simply don't start doing well again? Large parts of America have been declining for generations (West Virginia, much of Ohio, etc)

Which is likely. Echoes of the eurozone here for sure; SF probably needs 8% interest rates but even 0% is doing very little for the Rust Belt and other perennially depressed regions. Now, the eurozone critics think the problem is lack of fiscal union, but the US suggests it goes a lot deeper than that.

In principle, couldn't the issue be too few fiscal transfers? I.e. San Francisco should be paying even more into the federal coffers, to be redistributed even more to Alabama and New Mexico?

Or, thinking about the other direction, even restricting ourselves to within California San Francisco and the Bay Area single-handedly pay for a massively disproportionate part of state government services and redistribution. Perhaps it's time to go way back to metropolitan city-states as the proper scale of government.

Re: Landlords are trying not to rent to startups in San Francisco

#174

Post by logical42 »

compostor42 wrote: post #154
tayo42 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I don't know why people always say that. I live on less then half that. I eat out, drink, do stuff on weekends and pay my school loans and bills. Thats like 7000 a month? If you can't get by with that comfortably high cost of living is not your issue...

If you don't mind me asking, what are you paying for rent? Been considering moving out there so trying to get a feel for things.

I have an exceptional deal on my 2 bedroom in Mountain View which costs me around 2400/month. I believe the current market rate for my apartment is something like 3300.

If you're willing to live a bit further out (like Milpitas/Santa Clara), you can live somewhere for under/around 2000, which (when split with a spouse/partner/roommate) can be reasonable given the salaries in the area.

Re: Landlords are trying not to rent to startups in San Francisco

#175

Post by benatkin »

pmorici wrote: post #95
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.

My bet is that Baltimore is poised to become a big tech hub. There was a ton of money spent in the tech sector after 2001 and that is tapering off now and you have a bunch of engineers with 10 years experience and the low cost of living in Baltimore which makes for a lot of opportunity to try things. The city also has a very Art oriented quirky culture like SF had before it priced out all the creative people and a lo…

> right on the ocean

No, it's on the Chesapeake Bay.

Re: Landlords are trying not to rent to startups in San Francisco

#176

Post by ectoplasm »

mooreds wrote: post #170
pkulak wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how you do it. Rent a tiny space in SF for your token SF people, then open offices in Portland, Boulder, Austin, etc. You're still an SF company, but your runway is twice as long as everyone else's.

This strategy needs a name. Maybe "The SF funding tentacle"?

"Bait and switch"?

Re: Landlords are trying not to rent to startups in San Francisco

#177

Post by davemel37 »

AlexeyMK wrote: post #158

One solution that is not being discussed is for VCs to offer office space for start-ups. VCs have longer time-horizons (a typical VC fund will be spent over 5 or so years) and appear more stable to landlords. In addition, one of the toughest problems for VCs as I understand is dealflow - when it comes to a super-competitive round, Andreessen or Sequoia will often push other VC firms out of the round by throwing their…

A very clever idea...they dont even need to offer it for free..they just need to sign the lease or buy the building and lease it to their portfolio companies.

Edit: this would be a really clever idea for a fund to raise a round just to buy real estate to lease to their portfolio companies. It will give investors a chance at indirectly investing in startups with secure value backing the investment.

Re: Landlords are trying not to rent to startups in San Francisco

#178

Post by bmelton »

pmorici wrote: post #95
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.

My bet is that Baltimore is poised to become a big tech hub. There was a ton of money spent in the tech sector after 2001 and that is tapering off now and you have a bunch of engineers with 10 years experience and the low cost of living in Baltimore which makes for a lot of opportunity to try things. The city also has a very Art oriented quirky culture like SF had before it priced out all the creative people and a lo…

I agree, but for very different kinds of startups.

Baltimore can be anything it wants to be, but what it's aiming at right now are a batch of far more conservative startups than you'd likely see in the valley.

B2B, marketing, government and fortune 500-based startups have every much the right to succeed in Baltimore as anywhere else, and with access to DC, certain markets are even better suited to Baltimore than to SF... but from everything I've seen, it would be a great deal harder to make something like Twitter work for a Baltimore-area VC, and where SF is killing it is in understanding the potential of network-effect startups that don't necessarily deliver immediate value, and to my eye, Baltimore VCs aren't remotely ready for that sort of gamble.

Shortmail and Sickweather are probably the closest I've seen to breaking that trend to date, but Shortmail's already shuttered, and I hope that doesn't sour the pool.

Re: Landlords are trying not to rent to startups in San Francisco

#179

Post by [deleted] »

tbrownaw wrote: post #152
stirno wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When teams have problems with remote v local employees, I've found this to be because they actively treat them differently, sometimes without realizing it. It takes work to establish your culture to work remotely well -- if you just hire some people that you only ever hear on Skype during standup and give them work, they don't become enmeshed in the fabric of the company. Cliques form everywhere but they can be espec…

When teams have problems with remote v local employees, I've found this to be because they actively treat them differently, sometimes without realizing it. Yeah, some teams like to take advantage of the far richer communication that's available in person rather than handicapping everyone to the lowest common denominator. If you attempt it again, make sure you evaluate whether you've built a culture based on 'being th…

[deleted]

Re: Landlords are trying not to rent to startups in San Francisco

#180

Post by scarmig »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #133
mschuster91 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Native Americans iirc thrived without the concept of "privatized land" for thousands of years. Same for basically other self-sustaining native population in history. Okay, you got the occasional clashes with other clans for land but hey, you could always move somewhere else. That's impossible now, given the massive numbers of humans on this planet.

Sorry, that is not correct. http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/exhibits/aztec/aztec_property.... I doubt there's ever been an urban culture that didn't have some concept of property ownership, whether by individuals, "nobles", or the state.

Depends on the particular geographic area you're talking about. In the Northeast, for example, land rights were radically different from the Aztecs.

That said, it was never as simple as "everyone holds land in common and can do whatever they want with it individually."

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