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Sam Altman: Bay Area is no longer the obvious place for startups

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Re: Sam Altman: Bay Area is no longer the obvious place for startups

#251

Post by Bahamut »

randomacct3847 wrote: post #231
Bahamut wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is more than enough to buy - not sure what you're expectations are around buying here. Sure, it maybe possible to buy instantly in Austin, to my understanding in not as great neighborhoods if you want it cheaper, as I hear house prices have gone up there as well, but in 5-10 years of working at $300k+, it's very possible to buy in most of the Bay Area. The benefit becomes compounded in the Bay Area if you have a s…

Not if the best places are cash offers only. And cap on SALT taxes starting 2018 tax year means many high earners will not be able to deduct expensive property taxes and most income above and beyond their base salary. 300k is living with a roommate level IMO unless you’re just looking to buy a 1 bedroom and not have kids.

What the heck would you be spending $ on to be living with a non-significant other roommate necessarily at $300k?

This is extraordinary hyperbole that pretty much ignores what it’s really like in the Bay Area - many people making $100k or even less don’t even live with roommates here if they don’t want to. I make over $300k myself and the only reason I have a roommate is because she’s one of my best friends and I am helping her out while she’s early in her career.

There’s no need to put down another place just due to whatever biases, especially if there are few facts behind it. It’s ok to like where you’re at without going to extraordinary lengths to stretch it to everyone.

Re: Sam Altman: Bay Area is no longer the obvious place for startups

#252

Post by gamechangr »

ulfw wrote: post #13

One of the biggest reasons so many startups moved (or started) in the Bay Area was because VCs didn't bother traveling and funded mostly local companies. Has that changed?

No - it hasn't.

It's not that they "didn't bother traveling". That's inverted logic.

They would go to where the best ideas are most likely to be. Where are the best ideas most likely to be = SV.

You might instead ask: "Why are there unicorn ideas that are unwilling to present a slide deck in SV?" That would be harder to answer.

Re: Sam Altman: Bay Area is no longer the obvious place for startups

#253

Post by pascalxus »

baddox wrote: post #123
sytelus wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why doesn’t your employees move out of Bay Area with you? Assuming if you keep offering same comp, this would cut down mortgage expenses to half and even gain much better housing in better school areas. It should be no brainer to move out if comp remains same. So you can come in to shop for talent, have them work remotely until they are ready. No need to open expensive offices in Bay Area.

Why would the assumption be that most people would want to move away from their homes because their current employer wants to save money? Sure, many tech employees probably moved to the Bay Area primarily to find employment, but even if they don’t enjoy other aspects of the area, a place you live in for a while will become your home, and abandoning your home is not an easy or obvious decision to make.

Most of us bay area folks fantasize about leaving this place. But, it's hard to get out of here. all our friends and family are here, not to mention our jobs. if it wasn't for that, I'd bet people would be leaving in droves.

Re: Sam Altman: Bay Area is no longer the obvious place for startups

#254

Post by m0llusk »

myspy wrote: post #125
baddox wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would the assumption be that most people would want to move away from their homes because their current employer wants to save money? Sure, many tech employees probably moved to the Bay Area primarily to find employment, but even if they don’t enjoy other aspects of the area, a place you live in for a while will become your home, and abandoning your home is not an easy or obvious decision to make.

Yey, living in SF where junkies shoot on the street and everything is littered with excrements because fuck you good social security system. Let‘s live there! Plus, everything really expensive to live there. And if I work at Google I drive two hours with a bus there. I don‘t know but reading about that place it‘s insanity. And the output is Hit and miss. I know of no startup in the last ten years that‘s any substanti…

The Bay Area functions as a connected region with many areas that are not as troubled as SF.

Re: Sam Altman: Bay Area is no longer the obvious place for startups

#255

Post by badfrog »

akhilcacharya wrote: post #187
badfrog wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, at FANG when you get promoted, your RSU grant isn't increased to match the new level. So if you can get a job elsewhere at your new level, it's almost always a big pay increase.

I’m pretty sure that only happens at Amazon

I know from personal experience that this happens at more than just Amazon.

Re: Sam Altman: Bay Area is no longer the obvious place for startups

#256

Post by newman8r »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #242
jaggederest wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been working on the logistics of this and it's pretty tough. If everyone at your "semi off grid" live/work community works in tech, you have plenty of money but little free time, and end up bringing in most of the maintenance of the environment, which is expensive and alienating. It's much the same kind of way that it's unaffordable to live in SF if you're a janitor. If you have some residents working in tech an…

I have read about off-gridders who live in the middle-of-nowhere in Southern California near the Mexico border because it's possible to live on next to nothing. Like they support themselves on as little as $600/month (or did, whenever the piece in question was written). They also do stupid stuff like reclaim ordinance as a means to make money and sometimes get blown up that way. It's possible this was mentioned in th…

Have you seen the "scrapper" documentary? It's about those ordnance pickers near the Salton Sea - I recommend it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4pFat3VTkI

Those spots are kind of rough and blighted, although there's a lot of cheap land to be had in other areas of the California deserts.

Re: Sam Altman: Bay Area is no longer the obvious place for startups

#257

Post by chrischen »

myspy wrote: post #125
baddox wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would the assumption be that most people would want to move away from their homes because their current employer wants to save money? Sure, many tech employees probably moved to the Bay Area primarily to find employment, but even if they don’t enjoy other aspects of the area, a place you live in for a while will become your home, and abandoning your home is not an easy or obvious decision to make.

Yey, living in SF where junkies shoot on the street and everything is littered with excrements because fuck you good social security system. Let‘s live there! Plus, everything really expensive to live there. And if I work at Google I drive two hours with a bus there. I don‘t know but reading about that place it‘s insanity. And the output is Hit and miss. I know of no startup in the last ten years that‘s any substanti…

The reason why the homeless and junkies are in SF are because of the wealth, and the good support and benefits that exist for homeless people here. There's no borders in SF, so the nation's homeless will flock here because the police don't harass them as much, and they can get a lot of easy money from tourists/petty crime on the local rich people. So the homeless problem isn't an SF problem as it is is an American problem, and SF's one of the few places that doesn't kick them out again.

Re: Sam Altman: Bay Area is no longer the obvious place for startups

#258

Post by pcwalton »

tptacek wrote: post #222
dmode wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work near Civic center and go there everyday. You know, like, Chicago has 500 murders a year. Nothing in SF and Oakland even comes close to that. Oakland used to be the crime capital in the US. People can actually live in West Oakland now. Oakland hill homes now run at $2mn. Drug use in SF has been prevalent since, what like 60s. I have been living in SF since well before the boom. Mid market and Tenderloin used to…

What's your point, regarding Chicago? Chicago is much larger than San Francisco; it's 5 times larger by area and over 3 times as many people. Chicago isn't one of the country's top cities by murder rate. Further, Chicago murders are largely confined to west and south sides of the city, a result of redlining, and most people in the city (even fewer professionals) don't live in those areas. It's true, San Francisco use…

> The CTA goes pretty much everywhere and isn't an open-air drug market.

To be fair, the antisocial behavior I witnessed on the CTA {Green Line|Red Line south of Roosevelt} and the Muni is comparable. I've never been verbally accosted by passengers on CTA like I have on Muni, but I did witness blatant pickpocketing and a drugged passenger break the bus door on CTA, which I've never seen on Muni.

For what it's worth, my sense is that the issues that SF has Chicago doesn't--homelessness, untreated mental illness--largely stem from cost of living differences, particularly housing prices. Everything from opening shelters to operating mental health facilities to avoiding homelessness in the first place is easier when real estate is more affordable. (To give an example, my hometown of College Station, Texas--hardly a bastion of liberalism!--had a quite effective program for preventing homelessness in the '90s and the aughts: straight-up building enough houses to house virtually all the needy and pricing them far below market rate. This worked because of the combination of a rich suburban tax base and rock-bottom real estate prices, which would not work in Chicago or anywhere in California.) That doesn't excuse SF and the state of California from failing to better address the problems, of course.

Re: Sam Altman: Bay Area is no longer the obvious place for startups

#259

Post by ummonk »

zeckalpha wrote: post #245
ummonk wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that tautological? It's clearly an empirical statement. My source is my own observations of decacorns as well as IPOs during the last year. That said, feel free to skim through this (slightly outdated) list and note how a large fraction of the US-based companies are based in SF or SV: http://fortune.com/unicorns/

There are many billion dollar private companies that meet the strict definition but do not get included in lists of “unicorns”: https://www.forbes.com/largest-private-companies/list/

Skimming through that list they look like long-running businesses, not startups. They may have been startups once upon a time (same as any publicly-traded business for that matter), but they're completely irrelevant to a discussion of where modern day startups seeking to scale to billion dollar entities should be founded.

Re: Sam Altman: Bay Area is no longer the obvious place for startups

#260

Post by inferiorhuman »

pcwalton wrote: post #258
tptacek wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your point, regarding Chicago? Chicago is much larger than San Francisco; it's 5 times larger by area and over 3 times as many people. Chicago isn't one of the country's top cities by murder rate. Further, Chicago murders are largely confined to west and south sides of the city, a result of redlining, and most people in the city (even fewer professionals) don't live in those areas. It's true, San Francisco use…

> The CTA goes pretty much everywhere and isn't an open-air drug market. To be fair, the antisocial behavior I witnessed on the CTA {Green Line|Red Line south of Roosevelt} and the Muni is comparable. I've never been verbally accosted by passengers on CTA like I have on Muni, but I did witness blatant pickpocketing and a drugged passenger break the bus door on CTA, which I've never seen on Muni. For what it's worth,…

For what it's worth, my sense is that the issues that SF has Chicago doesn't--homelessness, untreated mental illness--largely stem from cost of living differences, particularly housing prices.

My experience is that Muni itself is generally OK (yes even the 8/9, 14, and 38), but that BART has gotten really bad over the past couple years. For a while Muni stopped running the (then new) hybrid buses in the Bayview because people would hit the external kill switches when the bus was stopped.

There are a couple of California-specific and SF-specific issues at play as well. SFPD simply doesn't ride Muni, although I believe they're contractually obligated to. Meanwhile BART PD is spread very thin (around four officers at any given time for their SF stations).

At the state level, California makes it very difficult to force someone to stay on psychiatric medication or keep them in an institution. I don't believe this is as much of an issue in Illinois.

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