

Garry's SF Guide to Where Your Startup Should Be - pitdesi
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&oe=UTF8&msa=0&msid=111291639665197066699.00048b3c0d910bf1a232a

======
goodweeds
Downtown Oakland was sadly ignored. The nice side of Lake Merritt, as well as
downtown and Jack London Square are generally overlooked. Maybe that's a good
thing for my rent. I pay $1900 for an 1100 ft^2 2br/2bath right next to jack
london square, with a pool, a hot tub, and soon with a 100mbps synchronous
connection that will cost $45/month. BART is 4 blocks away and door to door
I'm downtown in 30 minutes. I'm looking at downtown office space now and it's
incredibly cheap, plus the business taxes are a lot cheaper.

The food scene isn't as great as Berkeley, but rent is 30% cheaper, and there
are far fewer yuppy moms walking around with kids in strollers, which makes me
happy. There has been a pretty solid core of hackers moving here in the past
two years, generally people like me in our early '30s who have been in SF for
a decade+ and have finally stopped drinking the "San Francisco is worth $4k
for a 750 ft^2 apartment" koolaid.

------
jackowayed
It's interesting that he didn't include the Financial District. I know of a
number of startups there, including some YC startups. He did make this a
couple years ago though, and it may be that that's a more recent expansion as
it's gotten harder to find reasonable options in SOMA.

I worked at Cloudera's office in FiDi over the summer and liked the area a
lot. Super-convenient via BART (less convenient than SOMA via Caltrain, but
one could always transfer to BART at Millbrae). Right in the middle of
everything. Good food options. Felt pretty safe walking to BART after dark
because there's enough people around.

~~~
rabidsnail
It seems like startups tend to move north once they get to the stage where
they're not quite really startups anymore. Dropbox is a classic example. I
don't know how easy it is to find space up there if you're not using a whole
floor of an office building, though.

~~~
jaredsohn
north? That doesn't sound like a general trend (I'd expect south), and doesn't
match my understanding of Dropbox's moving pattern (153 Kerney to Market St.
to near AT&T park.)

~~~
rabidsnail
I was thinking of their move to 153 Kearny.

------
_delirium
Santa Cruz can be a good option for some kinds of things.

Pros: Lower housing/office rental costs than most of SF/SV, nice ocean, less
crowded coffee shops, lots of UCSC students willing to work as cheap summer
interns in return for not having to commute across the hill, lower salaries
for senior engineers for the same reason if you find one[1], substantial local
indie-gaming startup scene (Team Meat, Chronic Logic, Gaijin Games, Graeme
Devine), laid-back lifestyle.

Cons: Further from the VC and most of the tech/meetup action, SF/SV people
consider it infinitely far away, harder to find senior engineers, few local
peers if you _aren't_ in the indie-game space, laid-back lifestyle.

[1] There are a _lot_ of engineers who live in SC, either because they prefer
it to living in the Valley, or because they already established families there
back when there were more tech jobs (SCO, etc.). Most now commute to Mountain
View, San Jose, or Cupertino, but many would take a substantial paycut to not
have to make that commute every day, which seems like a potential arbitraging
opportunity for the right startup.

------
rabidsnail
Re: Dogpatch / Potrero Hill

The area around 3rd and 20th is actually pretty well connected transit-wise
(near 22nd st caltrain, the T line, and three or four bus lines), is a 30
minute walk from soma, and is still pretty cheap. And although the real estate
prices are going up (along with the rest of the city) there's still a lot of
underutilized land to expand into that should act as a buffer on rent prices.
If I were looking for a place to start an office I would look there first.

google maps: <http://g.co/maps/dqmrn>

walkscore: [http://www.walkscore.com/score/3rd-and-20th-st-san-
francisco...](http://www.walkscore.com/score/3rd-and-20th-st-san-francisco-ca)

~~~
impendia
I lived a block from 3rd and 20th. It's a reasonable place to live, I liked
it, and it is indeed next to Caltrain, the T, and the 22 and 48 buses.

But there isn't a lot _right_ there, it always takes at least fifteen minutes
go get where the action is (i.e. the Mission). I recommend it for anyone who
commutes to Stanford, Palo Alto, Mountain View, etc. but wants to live in the
city... but if I didn't have my commute I probably would have lived in the
Mission/Castro/Hayes Valley/etc.

~~~
rabidsnail
There's a lot more there now than there was a year or two ago. Most of the
places in the immediate vicinity were started in the past year and a half.

------
5vforest
+1 for Berkeley, my rent is less than half of what I would be paying on the
other side of the bay, not to mention it's just great out here.

~~~
potatolicious
I've been looking around the Bay for way-cheap alternatives to the city, and
nothing I've seen in Berkeley is that cheap. It seems anything close to
transit is comparable to SF (at most a 10% discount).

It would seem that "far from SF" is countered by "population of monied
students".

~~~
rms
I pay $4700/month for an architecturally magnificent 5BR 2200 square foot
house on the block east of the Berkeley Bowl. I suppose it's not cheap on an
absolute scale, but a comparable house in SF would be $8000/month at the very
minimum and in Pacific Heights or the Marina or a neighborhood I don't want to
live in. I think you're underestimating the cost of San Francisco right now.

Berkeley is more expensive than Silicon Valley, but it has all of the
amenities of a major metropolis (except late night anything) while being quite
small in the scheme of things. It's still absolutely not a place to go for a
way cheap alternative to a city, as it's still one of the most expensive areas
in the USA.

~~~
potatolicious
Ah, there's the difference then - I've been looking at 0/1/2BR apartments in
both SF and Berkeley. It seems like a decent 1BR near BART will run in the
$1600-2000 range, which is in the same ballpark as most of SF.

------
elangoc
this is very cool! I came to the area recently and settled in Berkeley based
on a PG essay, and I think it deserves the good review that it gets on the
map. I thought being in the Gourmet Ghetto area would be too far away from the
bustling student-y area with cheap food, but it's nice to see it got
mentioned.

Travel to SV via public transit is a 2-2.5 hr trip door-to-door (maybe a
little more, depending where, and if you need to walk). If commuting is only a
once in a while thing, it's not too painful with a Clipper Card but maybe
expensive.

~~~
reneherse
Totally agree with the vibe of Berkeley that PG talks about in "Cities and
Ambition"; it's all about quality of life. I lived there for a couple years
and loved it (though I wasn't in tech at the time), and now I'm considering
relocating there again.

For me the greatest advantage of Berkeley is the opportunity for amazing
outdoor recreation, which is a boon if you enjoy nature and want to keep in
shape while avoiding the gym. You can live literally minutes away from trail
heads into the hills for hiking or biking. Lunchtime trail running? Not a
problem. Also at Berkeley Marina you have one of the best locations for
sailing in the Bay Area.

Access to healthy food is also a huge plus. I've never seen a wider selection
of reasonably priced vegetables than at the produce section of the Berkeley
Bowl.

And, there's far more sunshine than anywhere else on the Peninsula north of
Millbrae.

Lastly, I agree with your comments and disagree with the author's regarding
the commute to SV. An occasional commute to SV is very doable by BART and
Caltrain, but a ridiculously stressful waste by car. Just bring your earplugs
for those acoustically torturous minutes in the Transbay Tunnel.

------
neilk
I'm not much of a businessperson, but I wonder why startups cluster in
expensive places like South Park. You could move to a loft in the East Bay,
not too far from BART, and save enough to pay a whole other salary, maybe two.

pg's thesis about Silicon Valley is that it's mostly the about the investors.
I assume that the talent pool is willing to do a BART ride to the East Bay for
the right startup. So is being smack dab in the middle of the cluster that
vital to success? How does the math work out?

------
rll
I'd look at downtown Sunnyvale as well. Nokia moved in a while ago, and Apple
will be moving in later this year. Murphy street has a little bit of life,
although not as much as University in PA or Castro in MV. But the rents are
lower than PA/MV and Sunnyvale is a Caltrain bullet stop. Lots of startups in
Sunnyvale too, although many of them are over in the Plug and Play Techcenter
place which is far from everything except the skate park.

------
bentlegen
This was written in 2010. How do these locations fare today?

~~~
potatolicious
I'm surprised he called out the Mission (east of Valencia, which is to say,
95% of the Mission) as being dangerous at night... and didn't do it for
"Affordable SOMA". That part of town is infinitely more dangerous at night
than even 16/Mission, which is about as bad as that neighborhood gets.

I'd consider anything west of 6th in SOMA to be considerably sketchier than
any part of the Mission.

Not sure if this list is supposed to be a guide on where to put your office in
SF, or where to live. He calls out west SOMA as "most soulless area to live in
SF" - well yeah, it's the financial district, you put your office there, you
don't live there.

Besides, that title more rightfully belongs to the Marina district.

~~~
timr
I live west of 6th in SOMA. It gets sketchy around 7th and 8th, and near the
hall of justice, but otherwise it's fine.

Meanwhile, in the last year there have been multiple assaults, robberies and a
few rapes in the part of Mission that you've called safe. YMMV.

~~~
potatolicious
I didn't call the Mission safe - please don't be putting words in my mouth.
Neither the Mission nor SOMA are good neighborhoods crime-wise, but I'd much
rather walk the streets of the Mission if given only one of two choices.

The map bears itself out: <http://www.trulia.com/crime/San_Francisco,CA,SoMa/>

Somewhat crime-related but non-violent - besides the BART stops general
hygiene in the Mission is not bad, whereas most of the main thoroughfares of
west SOMA consistent reek of shit and piss.

> _"Meanwhile, in the last year there have been multiple assaults, robberies
> and a few rapes in the part of Mission"_

... and there haven't been in SOMA?

In any case, this is all pedantics. San Francisco is overall a crime-ridden
city where its monied residents waffle between pretending crime doesn't exist,
and mocking people who are concerned about it.

~~~
timr
That map has everything from assault to noise complaints. Open up a few of the
SOMA listings, and you'll see that (again, other than around the places I
mentioned), that the "events" are mostly petty stuff.

Of _course_ no neighborhood is crime-free, but you're blowing the danger of
SOMA entirely out of proportion based on your perceptions of aesthetics.

------
harlowja
Just stay away from milpitas ;)

~~~
seltzered_
May I ask why? Just curious, my totally-non-startup employer is based out
there and I've thought about pitching to work remotely / office there. I'm
tired of texas.

------
lawrence
The area to watch right now if you want central location, access to Bart, and
an up coming startup scene is around Civic Center, between 6th and 10th and
market / mission. It's still VERY sketchy there, but not for long - Twitter is
coming soon, and this should start to gentrify / startupify things. Lots of
classic, old SF office buildings there too.

~~~
potatolicious
How do you think it will gentrify?

There is already plenty of "legitimate" foot traffic there in the daytime from
all the government and government-affiliated offices. That doesn't seem to
have helped.

The homeless and addicts congregate there because of a combination of housing
policy and placement of social services. As long as those remain, I'm not sure
if all the startups of the Bay could displace them.

Note: I'm not advocating removing housing/services for the homeless, but
rather that forcibly moving a bunch of startups there will just mean you'll
add a lot of startups into the mix of sketchiness. It won't get _rid_ of the
sketchiness.

~~~
lawrence
You might be right. But dropping one giant startup in there will almost
certainly mean new coffee shops, restaurants, and more courage for other
startups to move in.

~~~
spudlyo
I hope you're right, but I think that'd be more likely to happen if Twitter
didn't already provide all the coffee and food that their people might want.
There really isn't a reason to leave the office during the day.

------
aiurtourist
"The Mission: Recommended for awesome people."

Guess I'm not awesome. I'll just continue to live in the south bay under a
rock.

------
kkt262
This is an excellent guide, especially since me and my co-founder are moving
to SF soon.

Any price range info by chance?

------
eli_gottlieb
So whatever happened to "not in San Francisco"?

