

Ask HN: Moving to SF Have a couple of questions - ApolloRising

Hi,<p>I'm a product director who also does front end development. I am moving to the SF area and wanted to ask a few questions.<p>If you were looking to hook up with a startup and start meeting people in the community where would you live? From my research I think mountain view would be a good place to live that is not super expensive. I am working on a few of my own startup ideas and am bootstrapping it myself for the first few months. My work related stuff has already won a few awards so would love to network with any rails/django coders in the area.<p>Since I really don't know any of the areas in SF except from what I read online about where new startups are going. I would like to find a place that would be within easy driving distance of meetups and other social/tech functions.<p>I know this is not a normal HN type question, but I think perhaps it could be of use to others that are coming to the area and need a bit of info to make the jump. (I know it would be at least useful to me)<p>Thanks for your help in advance.
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farmerwu
I live in San Francisco ("the City"), and I'm a huge fan of the place. And the
previous posts are right about there be more social life, by far, in SF. But
given your situation, I would think carefully about Mountain View. There's so
much talent down in the valley. The city tends to be younger and more design-
centric. And Mountain View or one of the towns near it is certainly far
cheaper.

Also, it depends a lot on you what your start up ideas involve. I would look
at the Peninsula like an OSI 7-layer stack. San Jose and the South Bay are the
lower layers, and then as you move north, you work your way into the higher
layers. There is a definite clustering of expertise anchored by a a few big
companies in each area. Core networking and silicon bending are done in San
Jose by Intel, AMAT, Nat Semi., Layer 2-3 are down close by with Cisco. Mtn.
View, Palo Alto, and San have some great middleware and web software - Google,
Yahoo, Oracle. Then SF is a lot of UI and Application layer work. To be fair,
the city is attracting a whole new wave of start-ups. And my OSI model has all
kinds of glitches (like Apple being so far south). but I still think its a
good guide line. If you're doing something similar to what Google does, it
might make sense to be physically close to them. And I'll say it again, the
South Bay is much cheaper.

~~~
ApolloRising
Hi thanks for this post. My main goal is to either start or join a small
startup looking to solve an interesting problem (I do conversion optimization
and product development so something near the app layer and UI is where I know
I can improve a great many websites - designing for optimal user flow,
creating an entire site around converting a user into registering, decreasing
bounce rates, that is what I do very well with the analytics that go with it)

If you know any company looking for a product director would love to talk to
them.

But back to the location thing, I will take a look at the city as well, it
certainly is a bit pricey but I will know more after I visit in the next few
weeks to look at a few neighborhoods.

You guys have really been great answering all the questions and making me feel
welcome so thanks for that and hope to meet you all when I settle in.

If you need help with your startup to get people to convert and want to bounce
ideas off me, my email is in the profile and would be happy to speak to you
all about it.

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wavesplash
Welcome. Most of the event activity is based in SF. There are fewer events on
the peninsula. Mtn. View is kind of boring by itself (not much to do after
10pm even on the weekends) and the social scene is based around established
friends networks, dinners, and movies. SF has a mix of real startup folks and
some 'tech hipsters' (tech folk trying desperately to think they're no longer
the high-school geeks they really are). You'll find it easier to network and
attend events in SF.

So, try landing in SF first. When you're actually ready to start something, I
might suggest revisiting the south bay. The lack of social events is actually
a huge plus for getting work done. Plus the engineers you find in the south
bay tend to love their work more (not as interested in the 6pm happy hr).

Feel free to ping me when you get settled in (I'll leave an email hint in my
profile).

~~~
ApolloRising
Thanks appreciate the input

~~~
wavesplash
BTW, if you're far enough along with your ideas, see if you can attend
Startup2Startup or STIRR's FoundersTable. Both are great ways to meet quality
entrepreneurs.

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gtani
I couldn't find a good tech event calendar, maybe that's a good monetizable
thing:

[http://calendars.techvenue.com/cgi-
bin/techvenue.pl?Calendar...](http://calendars.techvenue.com/cgi-
bin/techvenue.pl?CalendarName=USValley&Op=ShowIt&Amount=Month&NavType=Both&Type=Block&Date=2009%2F10%2F1)

There's never a shortage of things. Thursday is baypiggies and erlounge, for
examp

<http://www.baypiggies.net/>

[http://groups.google.com/group/erlang-
programming/browse_thr...](http://groups.google.com/group/erlang-
programming/browse_thread/thread/637ed950b6d245c8#)

~~~
ApolloRising
Great calendar this was perfect

------
newy
SF is definitely where the social scene in, through there are lots of
hackathons etc in the Peninsula. Check out the Hacker Dojo in Mountain view,
for example. I personally settled in San Mateo just to be in between SF and
Mountain View / Palo Alto, trade-off between location, rent, quality of life,
etc. Feel free to ping when you settle.

~~~
ApolloRising
Will check out hackerdojo thanks for that info

