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The Decline of Investment in San Francisco Startups

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Re: The Decline of Investment in San Francisco Startups

#191

Post by Kpourdeilami »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #106
sulam wrote: post #105

The smart bet IMO is out of the US altogether. Eastern Europe (and Moscow/St Petersburg), China, Brazil, Argentina.

There are massive swaths of the US with much cheaper living than SF and better infrastructure, markets, and basic rights than Russia, China, or Brazil.

I would strongly recommend Canada, especially the Kitchener-Waterloo area. The rents are very reasonable (~$700 USD for a one bedroom apartment, in the safest neighbourhood in Waterloo) and there are tonnes of resources and help available there for early stage startups (Velocity - a free incubator that provides mentorship & office space, Communitech, etc) Not having to worry about things like health insurance is very nice. Also, there are lots of grants offered by the government and the universities there that make starting companies much easier. Last but not least, the access to lots of talented engineers graduating from UW who have experience working for companies like Apple, Google, Tesla, etc makes hiring good engineer so much easier.

The only shortcoming it has is a lack of access to capital which is quickly changing.

Re: The Decline of Investment in San Francisco Startups

#192

Post by timothycrosley »

mercutio2 wrote: post #187
timothycrosley wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seattle. Lose ~2-5 thousand a year in income on average as a Software engineer, save 1-2 thousand a month on rent, and no income tax: https://www.codementor.io/blog/best-cities-software-engineer...

People keep using Glassdoor numbers and think they’re representative. Representative of low performers, maybe, but even then I’m not convinced. The idea that a high performer only gives up $5k total comp going to Amazon or Microsoft in Seattle is... well, feel free to believe that. You’re making a ton of money any which way relative to the general population. But most people I know in the Bay Area don’t report that t…

Eh, it doesn't really matter what stats you drive from they all paint the same picture. More and more engineers are moving here from San Francisco for that reason. People never report that there leaving net income on the table, especially once they have enough to be comfortable, and most never even search to look.

Re: The Decline of Investment in San Francisco Startups

#193

Post by epicureanideal »

vedanta wrote: post #42
kevinburke wrote: post #6

Both top-level comments have mentioned housing prices. I grew up in the Bay Area and want to stay here and I am trying to work to change policy to help build more housing. Unfortunately due to law, bad policy and NIMBY's the market is not going to solve this problem on its own, without political change rents and housing prices will keep increasing. Here are some political actions you can take to help: - call your Sta…

There are also YIMBY orgs almost everywhere. The south bay YIMBY twitter account has updates on what you can do as well. From following the YIMBY movement ( http://www.slate.com/articles/business/metropolis/2017/06/yi... ) it's hard to not take the YIMBY position. More needs to be built, but we can have ~10% BMR requirements as ways of increasing diversity in a neighborhood and preserving some local control/culture.…

BMR is a scam in my opinion. It just prevents wages rising as they would naturally need to if housing became increasingly unaffordable to the point that workers can't even commute in. It recruits people into a program of lucky allocation rather than working for more. Busy or I'd write more.

Look how rent control turned out.

Re: The Decline of Investment in San Francisco Startups

#194

Post by ryandrake »

ihaveajob wrote: post #141
aswanson wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are the Bay Area public schools good? Or is it the thing to do to send kids to private school there like every other urban center?

It varies, but many of them are world class. That affects housing prices dramatically. People make calculations of where to buy a house depending on how many kids they expect to have: 0-2, buy somewhere cheap and send the kid to private school; 3+ and you need to buy somewhere with a better public school.

In fact, public school quality seems to be one of the biggest contributing factors to a home's price. And good / bad public schools seem to be dotted randomly across the Bay Area, so you have this weird effect where houses prices right across the street from each other could vary widely based on which school district it's in.

Take Castro Valley in the East Bay. Highly rated public schools. Your kid will get pretty good schooling there, but you need to fork over 900K for a little 4 bedroom split level. A few blocks over, you see the same house for the bargain basement price of $600K, but lo and behold, you're in Hayward, where you're going to need to send your kid to school wearing a bullet-proof vest.

Re: The Decline of Investment in San Francisco Startups

#195

Post by readhn »

nck4222 wrote: post #171
readhn wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Uhh, ever hear about the depression, dot com bubble, great recession/housing market crash? All of these are cyclical repeating events. Look at the historical data. This is how humans function. Trying to control cycles is pointless and i would say impossible. You just have to be mindful of them and may be "pad" yourself when you reach the extremes. Markets are pretty efficient at deciding what things are worth at t…

>All of these are cyclical repeating events. Look at the historical data. This is how humans function. Yeah, that's kinda my point. It's awful when left unregulated. And with the great depression/housing market crash, government stepped in to help people out and get the market going again once it was obvious the market had failed/was failing.

the history has shown so far that we cant control/regulate these large economic cycles.

Re: The Decline of Investment in San Francisco Startups

#196

Post by chadgeidel »

johan_larson wrote: post #188
fatbird wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People should give up. People should leave the area. They should move where they can find a job and a cost of living that's reasonable. The fact that people don't give up is why landlords can afford to charge $2,800/month for a 1 bedroom. You can't rent at $2,800/month if no one will sign the lease.

Maybe it's time for some soft vigilante action. Start mailing people brochures about how Denver, Seattle, Portland and Austin are really really nice places. And enclose a bullet.

Denverite here. It's not Silicon Valley, but rents and housing are pretty out of control here too. Additionally it's still very car-centric. Lots of opportunity though.

I really have no idea what the "enclose a bullet" part means.

Re: The Decline of Investment in San Francisco Startups

#197

Post by [deleted] »

Sleeep wrote: post #167
chrissnell wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone living in the Midwest and telecommuting to SFBA, that's almost unbelievable to me. I pay less than that for my brand new and quite nice 5/4 house on almost half an acre of land. With all of the remote work available, why would you stay here? I manage a team with two remote-friendly job openings currently. You could work for me and go live in Telluride, CO for less than that East Bay 1br and still have mone…

What's a 5/4 house? The Midwest is stereotypical for "affordable living" but I live in New England and it's fairly affordable here too in comparison. I own a three bedroom in town, with 20% down my P+I is $750 a month and PITI is $1275 a month. If I financed the whole thing the PITI would be $1462 a month. I think my housing cost is about average for the US.

[deleted]

Re: The Decline of Investment in San Francisco Startups

#198

Post by nck4222 »

greedo wrote: post #184
nck4222 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uhh, ever hear about the depression, dot com bubble, great recession/housing market crash? You're basically advocating "Let's do nothing, the market always corrects itself." Which is true to an extent, but in the extreme it also ruins lives, the country, and itself left unchecked during this process. This is why a completely unregulated market is a horrible idea. Government needs to step in at certain times. This mig…

Since when is the market unregulated?

Yeah I suppose unregulated is the wrong word. My overall point though is that this is something the local government can and should do something to fix.

Boston is currently also experiencing a housing shortage/crisis, and has a short and long term plan to help with it, which has already begun to start working.

Over the last 3 years new housing development has outpaced growth (which is also projected to stay strong)[1][2]. And rents are finally starting to dip. [3]

[1] - http://bostonrealestatetimes.com/boston-mayor-walsh-announce...

[2] - https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=kf7tgg1uo9ude_&...

[3] - https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/2017/05/28/bo...

Saying "this is cyclical the market will correct" is probably true, but corrections can take a long time before becoming swift and detrimental. It's possible to fix it quicker, less drastically, and improve things over the short term and long term with well thought out government intervention.

The private market isn't flawless. Steady growth is better than boom and bust.

Re: The Decline of Investment in San Francisco Startups

#199

Post by chadgeidel »

nailer wrote: post #115

This is excellent opportunity for anyone who wants investment from west coast VCs but doesn't want to deal with San Francisco, Oakland or the bay area. San Francisco frequently has human feces on the sidewalk in many areas right near the city center, high housing prices and a combination of startup bros and angry hard left outrage culture folk. The bay area is a cultureless void and Oakland is still dangerous. Better…

IMO Boulder itself isn't really an awesome place to live, but pretty much anywhere else along the Front Range (Ft Collins to Castle Rock) is lovely. Obviously there's a lot of VC in Boulder - a commute from the southern regions would be prohibitive. I just gave up a commute from downtown Denver to Boulder because it was pretty bad.

Re: The Decline of Investment in San Francisco Startups

#200

Post by thatfrenchguy »

nemonemo wrote: post #95
jpao79 wrote: post #65

A few questions for HN: 1.) Do you think San Jose will ever become "a thing" for tech startups? Is there enough to do there? There is a WeWork and San Pedro Square in downtown San Jose. Or is a waterfront view what make San Francisco, Seattle and Portland what they are? Also, if you did want to live in San Jose there where are the up and coming places for HNers to live? 2.) Cupertino used to be cherry orchards and su…

1) I believe so. Once Google goes into Diridon, enough young people would gather around the station, businesses would also gather, higher-density buildings will go up, start ups will start to gather as well. 2) Cupertino is close enough to Stanford and Moffett, which were the two centers of initial Silicon Valley. Morgan Hill and Brentwood are quite far. Still, its population and real estate markets will grow. 3) Hig…

Cupertino is so ridiculously boring that no one wants to live there though.
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