Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why Silicon Valley Works

blog.samaltman.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 252 posts

Re: Why Silicon Valley Works

#141

Post by nilkn »

porter wrote: post #86
Balgair wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the living part: My folks live in Concord and their next door neighbor just moved into assisted living at 95. Her house sold within a week for 700k to a young couple. It's a 3 bed 1 bath single story in Concord with drainage problems, mind you. Lets do the math here shall we: What is the mortgage and taxes(thanks prop13) on a place like? Well, at 4.05%, good credit, and 15% down, it's 2857.80/month just on the loa…

If it's so bad, why aren't people moving out of the valley?

Do we have any evidence that they aren't? The only people I personally know who have moved there are fresh college graduates.

Re: Why Silicon Valley Works

#142

Post by thisisnotatest »

joshhart wrote: post #6

My biggest concern with Silicon Valley is that it will become so expensive that many potential startups are prevented from coming here. Sam also stated that housing costs were the biggest weakness. I wonder what YC could do about this problem for it's companies. I think it would be interesting for YC to build a few high-rise live-work spaces for smaller YC companies to foster and grow the tightly-knit community. Mayb…

Sam is right about "the wildly-out-of-control housing costs, which is probably the biggest weakness here right now". FYI, some Mountain View tech workers volunteer for an organization called MV Voters for Housing Diversity. See who we endorse for City Council at www.mvhousing.org, and vote tomorrow! http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/find-polling-place.htm

In Palo Alto, there's a similar organization called Palo Alto Forward, which I know some Palantir employees are involved with. www.paloaltoforward.com

Re: Why Silicon Valley Works

#143

Post by rgbrgb »

axavuj05 wrote: post #126

Throw-away account for obvious reasons: > "Silicon Valley works because there is such a high density of people working on start-ups and they are inclined to help each other" Bull shit. With all due respect to Sam--who no doubt knows what he's doing and saying and has become very successful--he is undoubtedly living in a bubble of his own. While I've found people generally open to the idea of chatting over a coffee, I…

I'm sorry you're having a bad time, but you sound like you're caught up in a few delusions.

When someone gets coffee with a stranger they are "going out of their way to help". What more are you asking for in these conversations? Agreed, nobody's going to fund some random biz guy with no track record and "an idea" (my guess from your post, sorry if I'm wrong). Reading that as racism/elitism is counterproductive and most likely inaccurate.

Build something people want (get users) and the investor types you sound like you're pursuing will want to talk to you. Sure, a good resume can get you in the door, but the best resume isn't a list of stodgy institutions, it's a list of successful projects.

EDIT: FWIW, I agree that the deck is completely stacked against the poor. It is much easier to build something when you can borrow $20k from a rich uncle to live on for a while. It's much easier to talk to investor types if you're familiar with their world. But what I'm getting at above is that those things stop mattering the minute you've built a product people are using.

Re: Why Silicon Valley Works

#144

Post by ritchiea »

axavuj05 wrote: post #126

Throw-away account for obvious reasons: > "Silicon Valley works because there is such a high density of people working on start-ups and they are inclined to help each other" Bull shit. With all due respect to Sam--who no doubt knows what he's doing and saying and has become very successful--he is undoubtedly living in a bubble of his own. While I've found people generally open to the idea of chatting over a coffee, I…

I'm curious what kind of help you're looking for. I actually find it a bit odd when I hear over and over that others "offering help" is a strength of SV. Mostly because you really need to do two things, 1) make a product that addresses a need 2) and work to get people using it. You can get opinions on 1 or 2, but I can't imagine not getting them crushing your business. You can seek investment and if you're doing 1 or 2 well people will want to introduce you to investors. And if you're not doing 1 or 2 well you need to figure out how to do something valuable.

I'm not saying SV isn't biased, it is flawed like anywhere else, but I think this whole "startups helping other startups" thing is a bit fluffy in the first place.

Re: Why Silicon Valley Works

#145

Post by jessaustin »

batbomb wrote: post #81
hawkice wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree with the thrust of what you are saying, and I am particularly amused that in the age of almost infinite variation deliverable through the internet there is a kind of odd counter-signalling effect to avoiding that (I also like travel and have been doing it constantly for more than a year, though, so what do I know). Describing physical fitness as "the new status-symbol" seems pretty bizarre to me, tho…

Physical fitness itself isn't a status symbol, per se. How people conduct their personal physical fitness is what has elevated it to a status symbol. Things like when, where, how often, how public, what activities/exercises, and even what they wear to work... that's the new status symbol. A ridiculous recent example is the Trulia co-founder rowing to Hawaii with his wife for the cause of... wait for it.... the fight…

Thanks for mentioning this I hadn't heard of it! Sorry, I think it's awesome, and not because I care what other people eat.

http://www.fatchancerow.org/blog/2014/8/4/zero-miles-to-go-d...

Re: Why Silicon Valley Works

#146

Post by Spooky23 »

mathattack wrote: post #71
steven2012 wrote: post #17

No. The reason why Silicon Valley works is because of the intense greed that it provokes amongst everyone that comes here. Maybe "greed" is too strong of a word, because people aren't necessarily selfish, maybe "money-focused" is probably more accurate. And because anyone can come here and become a millionaire/billionaire, it draws in an immense number of hard-working people which just generally increase the level of…

Having lived in NYC too, the greed there trumps the greed in Silicon Valley. The greed in NYC is money for it's own sake. The greed in Silicon Valley at least has the pretense of creating good products. The greed in Silicon Valley requires creation of value in addition to capturing it. NYC is all about capturing in. A $4,000/month apartment in Silicon Valley gets you a good school. A $5,000/month apartment in NYC get…

Huh? High schools in NYC are merit-based. If a kid is in a school where kids can't read, it's not the city's fault.

Re: Why Silicon Valley Works

#147

Post by Spooky23 »

gmichnikov wrote: post #133
cm2012 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Manhattan is not NYC. You can rent a 1 bedroom for $1600 a month with a 20 minute train commute to Manhattan (and even less rent further away) in a great school district in Queens. I've lived in NYC my whole life, and worked in Manhattan my whole school and working life, and never paid more than $1400 a month in rent for 2 bedrooms - living with my wife and in only completely safe neighborhoods.

Somewhat off-topic, but if you don't mind sharing, what would you say is the optimal Queens neighborhood for proximity/price/schools?

Check out Woodside and Maspeth.

Re: Why Silicon Valley Works

#148

Post by beat »

smtddr wrote: post #63
beat wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But most people want them, and arguably deserve them. The "kill my neighbor's cow so everything is even" is an even more toxic thought pattern than the Prisoner's Dilemma that constitutes our mainstream. Think big, man.

What I'm trying to say is... I'd be more interested in getting a bigger chunk of society to catch up to our level than us complaining, getting more and widening the gap between us and the rest of middle class USA. Basically, I think bayarea tech folks are doing pretty good and the ones who are truly suffering are the ones not in tech. The imagery[1] in my mind is like those 3-legged races where 2 people tie one of th…

As Peter Thiel has observed, if we tried to bring the world up to an American middle class standard of living without changing anything else, we'd quickly destroy the planet. So your choices are a: leave everyone else poor (a.1: wait til the oil runs out so we're poor too), or b: find some way to get us off oil and other things that keep us from raising that standard of living globally.

Silicon Valley, at its best, is doing exactly that. And sure as hell isn't anyone else trying.

Re: Why Silicon Valley Works

#149

Post by rhizome »

porter wrote: post #86
Balgair wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the living part: My folks live in Concord and their next door neighbor just moved into assisted living at 95. Her house sold within a week for 700k to a young couple. It's a 3 bed 1 bath single story in Concord with drainage problems, mind you. Lets do the math here shall we: What is the mortgage and taxes(thanks prop13) on a place like? Well, at 4.05%, good credit, and 15% down, it's 2857.80/month just on the loa…

If it's so bad, why aren't people moving out of the valley?

I'm guessing that the housing market is dancing with the maximum value of "1/3 of the typical house-buying population's salary" that buyers are willing to pay. If a lot of house-buyer are couples and they make $75-100K each, then that is balanced against maximum-tolerable commute time and voila, prices drop off once you get to Hercules, Tracy or Gilroy.

Re: Why Silicon Valley Works

#150

Post by Emphaticdotco »

nilkn wrote: post #91
steven2012 wrote: post #17

No. The reason why Silicon Valley works is because of the intense greed that it provokes amongst everyone that comes here. Maybe "greed" is too strong of a word, because people aren't necessarily selfish, maybe "money-focused" is probably more accurate. And because anyone can come here and become a millionaire/billionaire, it draws in an immense number of hard-working people which just generally increase the level of…

All this is part of the reason why I've strongly been thinking of going back to school to become a doctor. What follows is mostly a rant, just to be upfront about it. It's a really radical transition, but I really, really dislike the city-centric focus of software engineering. I hate the idea of being a contractor (I just want stable, life-long work), and I can't tell you how tired I am of crippling traffic causing m…

Traffic is atrocious. The driverless, grid-connected cars can't get here soon enough.
Post reply on HN