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Stripe to move to South San Francisco

sfchronicle.com

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Re: Stripe to move to South San Francisco

#181

Post by usaar333 »

giarc wrote: post #166
PopeDotNinja wrote: post #23

I can tell you recruiting for South San Francisco was way harder than recruiting for SF. If I lived in SF without a car, that'd be a deal breaker for me. They're going to start losing people, or see a huge spike in chronic working from home. I guess they have to move somewhere at some point, and no move is without trade-offs. Regarding the gross receipts tax, couldn't they just move their HQ-on-paper to any place tha…

Google Maps tells me this is a 14 minute drive (old HQ to Oyster Point Park). 16-30 minutes if you want to arrive at 8am. Is that correct? Is that such a game changer? Do that many people not own vehicles or can't carpool to work?

It's a major problem if you don't already commute by car, which is a lot of the City. Don't forget that driving to HQ often is slower than however people currently get there.

Re: Stripe to move to South San Francisco

#182

Post by [deleted] »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #138
abalone wrote: post #115

This blows, not so much because Stripe is leaving SF, but because it's going just over the border for tax purposes so 100% of employees who live in SF will stay in SF. The company just won't pay their fair share to the city to offset their impact. The line about this being about space and not taxes is hard to believe.[1] And for good reason. Last year Stripe funded an anti-homeless campaign just $1 shy of the reporti…

> Last year Stripe funded an anti-homeless campaign just $1 shy of the reporting threshold I don’t get the sense that San Francisco’s homeless problem can be solved by throwing dollars at it. San Francisco chooses high housing prices by restricting construction. Its NIMBYs block tackling its homelessness problem. Money won’t change those choices by San Francisco’s voters. It will just swell another city bureaucracy.

[deleted]

Re: Stripe to move to South San Francisco

#183

Post by rwmurrayVT »

adventured wrote: post #110
baby wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a national issue and SF is a symptom. Instead of pushing for healthcare, housing, more aids, and so on, people are just blaming it on mental health.

Your premise doesn't align with the facts . Poverty and homelessness are near all-time lows in the US right now, comparable to Canada. You wouldn't know that by looking at the streets of San Francisco (or Los Angeles for that matter). At a national level homelessness has declined dramatically since 2000. While San Francisco's problem has only kept getting worse. The US as a whole isn't seeing the homelessness problem…

There's a lot I disliked about the Bush administration, but the HUD programs changed homelessness immensely. You wouldn't know it in California, but they arrive there by the busload daily. It's unfortunate. The SV echochamber of HN isn't exposed to the massive changes of the last 20 years.

Re: Stripe to move to South San Francisco

#184

Post by dfelix »

dawg- wrote: post #149

I am not in the bay area, in fact I've never even been to the West Coast. So I am going to ask what may seem like a stupid question to some of you. I mean this in as polite a way as possible, but why wouldn't established companies like Stripe just fuck off to another city entirely? It's a successful company with a great product - that I'm sure many people would like to work for. They could surely lure talent from the…

To be fair, South San Francisco is not a region within San Francisco, but an entirely separate (yet adjacent) city.

Re: Stripe to move to South San Francisco

#185

Post by titanomachy »

ohduran wrote: post #159
dawg- wrote: post #149

I am not in the bay area, in fact I've never even been to the West Coast. So I am going to ask what may seem like a stupid question to some of you. I mean this in as polite a way as possible, but why wouldn't established companies like Stripe just fuck off to another city entirely? It's a successful company with a great product - that I'm sure many people would like to work for. They could surely lure talent from the…

A corollary to this well reasoned question would be: has Silicon Valley area peaked in terms of startup creation? On the one hand, you've got the talent there, attracted because the big tech is concentrated in the area; on the other hand, the living costs makes a ramen-profitable startup in SV way more expensive than a non-SV one. How should I look at this issue from the perspective of an outsider? Should I join the…

I don't have data to back this up, except anecdotal, but I think spending a few years in SF, NY, or Seattle can boost your market value by a factor of 3-4. So it could still be worth it in the long run.

Re: Stripe to move to South San Francisco

#186

Post by rwmurrayVT »

lukeschlather wrote: post #45
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Payment processing rates in China are ____ Payment processing rates in USA are ___ Can somebody help me double check something? I don’t know the answers to those questions I feel like I read WeChat processes payments at 0.1% while Stripe/PayPal are still around 2%

I have a credit card that gives me 1.5% cash back on every transaction. I'm reading that Visa typically charges 2.3% to merchants, and Stripe charges 2.9%, ignoring per-transaction fees. So Stripe itself probably gets around 0.6% of each transaction, and at least on average 1% of each transaction goes to cardholder bonuses, and the card issuer gets around 1.3%. Of course both Stripe and the issuer have some fraud pre…

There are entire organized crime rings and many, many individuals that specialize in merchant account fraud. In the early 2010's people were creating stripe accounts and processing up to $100,000 fraudulently. I'm not sure who ate that, but it surely had an impact on their bottom line. I had screenshots from Alphabay of over $5,000,000 in fraudulent charges on merchant accounts. If Stripe only makes 1% of transaction cost and has to eat the fraud then they'd have to charge $500,000,000 to just make up what was posted in a single "mastermind group". That is crazy...

Re: Stripe to move to South San Francisco

#187

Post by dawg- »

lsc wrote: post #171
dawg- wrote: post #149

I am not in the bay area, in fact I've never even been to the West Coast. So I am going to ask what may seem like a stupid question to some of you. I mean this in as polite a way as possible, but why wouldn't established companies like Stripe just fuck off to another city entirely? It's a successful company with a great product - that I'm sure many people would like to work for. They could surely lure talent from the…

> Is there some hidden reason that companies like this insist on staying in the same area despite the many potential advantages of looking elsewhere? the long term root is that there is a huge productivity advantage to clusters of workers. (or, at least many people believe so) Around here, if you strike up a random conversation in public, it's very likely you will do so with someone who does something relevant to wha…

Thanks for the insight, again I fully admit that I don't know the details of the housing/jobs market over there so it was really interesting to hear your perspective. I think the movie industry example is an interesting connection to make. For the last few years Atlanta has overtaken LA as the top producer of feature films in the country, largely due to crazy huge tax incentives for movie studios, and has earned the nickname "Y'allywood" or the hollywood of the south.

Maybe a big city elsewhere in the country will ever go "all-in" like Atlanta did and try to become the "Silicon Valley of the [South, Midwest, Rocky Mountains, etc.]"? I guess a place like Austin, TX could arguable lay claim to this title already, but their tech industry seems to be "home grown" because of the history of computing at UT and with Texas Instruments, NASA, Dell, etc. historically having strong roots in Texas.

But I wonder if a city could ever follow the model of Atlanta and try to build a "new Silicon Valley" from scratch with aggressive policies that lure companies/employees from existing tech hubs?

Re: Stripe to move to South San Francisco

#188

Post by ohduran »

titanomachy wrote: post #185
ohduran wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A corollary to this well reasoned question would be: has Silicon Valley area peaked in terms of startup creation? On the one hand, you've got the talent there, attracted because the big tech is concentrated in the area; on the other hand, the living costs makes a ramen-profitable startup in SV way more expensive than a non-SV one. How should I look at this issue from the perspective of an outsider? Should I join the…

I don't have data to back this up, except anecdotal, but I think spending a few years in SF, NY, or Seattle can boost your market value by a factor of 3-4. So it could still be worth it in the long run.

It's just my personal perspective, but... I'm still in awe of SV. I simply feel that the time to be there has passed, and I'm late to the party.

So where's the party now? It's happening somewhere. Someone is building the next big thing and none of us know yet. The eternal struggle of trying to predict the future.

Is Stripe's move a bad move? I guess that the execs are driven by the same fear of missing out what the future holds.

Re: Stripe to move to South San Francisco

#189

Post by timerol »

tshaddox wrote: post #109
AdieuToLogic wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > The feel of San Francisco is already lost, when a small single apartment runs $3000 a month. > And homeless are everywhere. Maybe a $3k per month "small single apartment" contributes to "homeless are everywhere."

When people say “homeless are everywhere” regarding SF, they’re probably referring to the extremely troubled people who are conspicuously doing drugs or screaming incoherently on the streets. I don’t think those people would suddenly be fine if only the SF apartments were $500 a month instead of $3000. Of course, there are a lot more homeless people in SF than the very conspicuously unwell people I mentioned. There a…

Homelessness is a very complicated issue, but it would absolutely be better for all people currently without homes if rent was that cheap. Many people who currently are living on the street or in shelters would be able to find stable housing. This would free up resources and care which could focus on those people who need it most.

Re: Stripe to move to South San Francisco

#190

Post by mc32 »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #180
mc32 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not in that year, but long term it can be a win (obviously depending on their goals).

One perspective is that the exchange permanently hamstrings the company. You spent let's say 3 years on average, training those engineers to be the best people in the world at solving Stripe's problems, but now they're gone with (unless you're gonna do double payroll for a while) only an arms-length handoff to the new staff. That's 300 person-years of training, gone forever. Arguably even worse, it propagates upwards…

Well, one option is to keep key people who don’t want to move remote and then through turnover replace them with new talent just as if the company had stayed. It’s not like key engs stay forever.
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