
Andreessen Horowitz is opening an office in SF - rohanmahajan
https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/11/andreessen-horowitz-is-making-the-move-to-san-francisco-at-long-last/
======
lquist
I was recently grabbing dinner with a group of CEOs and the unanimous
sentiment was that they would never take money from a16z (3 founders had
already and one other had a terrible experience with them during the pitch).
It seemed to come down to how combative and unhelpful the partners were. I am
sharing because it was a bit of a surprise to me (bootstrapped) and I think
it’s important to share insight into VCs—-there is so much opacity for such an
important decision.

~~~
chx
It's well known a16z guys will immediate ban anyone on Twitter the moment for
... anything. I am not talking of trolling, abuse -- just polite disagreement,
instant ban. Never seen any other organization doing similar and so
consistently.

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backpropaganda
How a16z manages their social media doesn't seem very relevant to founders who
are deciding on VCs. Could you clarify if you disagree?

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chx
It's their founders personal account that blocks everyone and I am reasonable
sure it's a personality trait.

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geomark
Andreesen blocked me, a little nobody, when I had a different opinion than him
when he was supporting an argument for an investment in some kind of app
targeted at young people in Southeast Asia. The app was supposed to aid them
in their entrepreneurial endeavors (or somethign like that). His comment was
something along the lines that the app would be highly utilized because just
about every young person in Southeast Asia is entrepreneurial. I commented
that that's not what I see in Thailand where everywhere I go I see nothing but
kids making silly conversation and sharing selfies. He called me a racist and
blocked me, which was particularly amusing because my son is one of those
kids. So could I be racist toward my own son?

~~~
loceng
Sounds like he may have insecurity and anger issues, not being able to
process/let emotion settle and has to take some sort of action to 'protect'
himself from what he perceives as too strong of a potential trigger. That
certainly will make a person fragile, also may lead them to be hyper-confident
in their beliefs, perception of passion and confidence is attractive to many
people who don't analyze situations deeply.

~~~
geomark
It seems to me to be more that a16z just wants to squelch anything that
doesn't support their agenda. They are always talking up their latest startup
no matter how flimsy it may be. Anything critical said about the regard as
hate speech. A place like Hacker News is anathema to them since people here
are more often critical and less often buy the hype. Which is why they call it
Hater News.

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dmode
It is surreal to commute and work in SF. I take BART or Caltrain to work and
amazed every day to see hundreds of thousands of engineers, product managers,
sales people, data scientists get off in Embarcadero and walk to their
destination. If you are in tech, it is incredibly energetic. I play “backpack
bingo”, where I try to identify someone’s employer from their backpack

~~~
Judgmentality
> If you are in tech, it is incredibly energetic.

I've never understood this. I'd like to be surrounded by people that don't all
do the same thing as me. I want to meet new and interesting people, not expand
the bubble around me. I already interact with everyone at work most of my day,
now I have to interact with people that fit that mold even when I'm not
working?

Different strokes for different folks, but SF has always felt like a bit of a
monoculture to me.

~~~
goseeastarwar
It's great when you're fresh out of school, single, and want to bury yourself
in the work.

It's unbelievably annoying after a few years when you're just trying to have
dinner with your wife without overhearing someone talking about raising a
round at the table next to you.

~~~
atlasunshrugged
Exactly, after moving to Berlin from SF I couldn't believe that I could
overhear conversations about art and music and a thousand other things and not
the usual talk about what VC you met and how much X company is valued.
Incredibly refreshing

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pj_mukh
I wonder how much of this is just because of the failure of Bay Area-wide fast
public transit.

BART never made it to the peninsula and electrification of Caltrain is taking
its sweet time. The only remaining option seems for everyone to crowd into SF
:/.

~~~
cylinder
Insane we are talking about electrifying a train line in 2019 in the tech
capital of America.

~~~
chrischen
Population and density have been low enough that a of peninsula people own
cars.

~~~
cylinder
Don't think that's it. Even Brisbane (Queensland) electrified its suburban
rail in the late 1970s.

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paxys
Almost every big tech IPO of 2019 (Uber, Lyft, Pinterest, Slack, Postmates,
Airbnb, Instacart) is headquartered in SF. It's undeniable that the center of
silicon valley is slowly shifting north.

~~~
jedberg
Back in the day, the name Silicon Valley came from the fact that most of the
companies worked with actual silicon. Most of them were based near Mt. View
because 1) The land was a lot cheaper than SF and 2) Most of the capital was
there.

The "new" SV is north because all the consumer websites set up shop in SF
since all they needed was office and not chip fabs, and they were mostly being
worked on by younger folks who wanted to live in the city proper.

Now we have a bifurcated ecosystem where all the hardware folks (and
companies) are still in the south bay (and don't kid yourself, there are a ton
of hardware startups down here still) and all the consumer stuff is up north.

You just hear about the consumer stuff more because most of the silicon
companies are B2B.

~~~
nostrademons
Facebook, Google, Apple, Yahoo, Adobe, Intuit, and Microsoft & Amazon's Bay
Area offices are all in SV.

I'd really divide it by era. Anything founded before 2005 is in Silicon
Valley; after that is in San Francisco. I actually think YCombinator is a big
driver of that; they funded younger startup founders (largely Millenials
rather than Gen-Xers) who wanted to live in the city.

~~~
grogenaut
Actually Amazon's offices in SF are split between the valley and downtown,
depending on what they're working on. I think hardware and embedded is out in
the valley. Software / services are more in SF. And that's not counting Twitch
which is in the Financial.

~~~
nostrademons
A9 (Amazon's search & advertising subsidiary) is in Palo Alto. That's the
office I'm most familiar with, although perhaps that's because of the
revolving door of high-level employees between it and Google.

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lhnz
I am hearing that startups are moving out of SF because it is too expensive.

Can anybody explain the strategy here? I realise that funding is mostly
centralised in SF, but this still feels weird to me.

~~~
smallgovt
In a way, startups are leaving SF BECAUSE startups are coming to SF. That is,
when there is a large influx of capital-rich startups, startups w/o capital
(or who are capital sensitive) are forced out.

Overall, there's a net in-flow of startups into SF, and so, the VC's follow.

~~~
gxs
Reminds me of the popular quote: "Nobody goes there anymore, it's too
crowded."

~~~
gubbrora
You can interpret it as "a _small fraction_ of people go because the _absolute
number_ of people is larger than capacity"

Stated like this it becomes obvious we need to pay attention to the
denominator.

------
KorematsuFred
I think the millennials are settling into better jobs like Google and Facebook
and the younger people are flocking to startups. That might be the reason why
startups are now focusing on SF rather than SJ area.

~~~
httpz
I thought Gen Z was just entering college? They're in the job market already?

~~~
nostrademons
Yes, Gen Z (whatever they're called - I've heard "Homelanders" and "iPod
generation", neither of which really feels right) is just entering college.
The people entering the workforce now are younger Millenials.

The Millenial generation really has three sub-generations: Xennials
(1981-1986, distinguished because they can a. remember the Cold War and b.
graduated into a decent economy, so they don't have the economic despair of
the rest of Millenial generation), older Millenials (1987-1992, these are the
folks who were totally fucked over by the Great Recession), and younger
Millenials (1991-2000, young enough that they could actually adapt to the
post-2009 economic conditions and make life-choices accordingly). Almost all
Millenial billionaires are actually Xennials: Mark Zuckerburg, Brian Chesky,
Drew Houston, Kevin Systrom, Mary Kate & Ashley Olsen, et al. The older
Millenials are who people usually think of as "Millenials" (grew up expecting
a lot, graduated when not a lot was to be found). There's a marked difference
in behavior with young Millenials: they are much more studious, much more
career-focused, more of them went into STEM careers, they're the ones driving
the FIRE & cryptocurrency movements, etc.

~~~
jaredsohn
Your years for 'xennials' don't match what I understood and what I mostly see
when googling it right now. My understanding has been for those born between
1977 and 1983.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xennials](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xennials).

Also, this group of xennials might not have graduated in a good economy (i.e.
around 2001)

~~~
goseeastarwar
I graduated from college and moved to SF in the mid-00's and it was still a
ghost town after the bubble burst. In hindsight, it was the perfect time to
come, because rent was still very depressed and my generation didn't have any
of the bubble scar tissue.

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abakker
In the article about Sam Altman stepping down, it mentioned that YC was moving
to the city as well. I guess the center of the universe is less and less
actually SV.

~~~
eanzenberg
I think the center of SV is becoming SF actually.

~~~
gatsby
Perfectly said.

In the 80s and 90s, the "center" of SV was Mountain View and surrounding
cities, with the VCs mostly in Menlo/Palo Also.

In the last 10 years, as companies have decided to increasingly be based out
of SF, the radius of SV is expanding, and a lot of that expansion is to the
north + east: Richmond, Concord, Walnut Creek, San Rafael, Mill Valley -
making SF the center of the action.

~~~
dragonwriter
> the radius of "the bay area"/SV is expanding

The radius of the Bay Area hasn't changed, “Silicon Valley” has just moved to
align more with the Bay Area rather than being an overlapping region to the
South. All the places you point to as “new expansion” for “the Bay Area” have
always been part of the SF Bay Area which SF has always been part of.

~~~
gatsby
Fair point - updated my original comment to remove the expansion of the "bay
area."

~~~
adw
Also, the South Bay is becoming/has become enterprise-land. As Silicon Valley
startups increasingly aim towards the consumer market, it makes sense that
they would locate themselves in the biggest media/consumer/tourist hub.

(Even the biggest enterprise companies can be SF-based, though – SalesForce,
for example...)

~~~
seem_2211
I don't know if that's true. A lot of B2B SaaS companies are in San Francisco,
and I can't see a lot of them moving (Okta, New Relic, Twilio all come to
mind). That said there are A LOT of old school enterprise companies in the
South Bay / Peninsula.

~~~
adw
B2B SaaS companies are in large part about addressing the enterprise without
being Oracle or friends, though!

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minimaxir
There's quite a lot of large startups in that area that A16Z has (or had) a
stake in and would only be a block away from. (e.g. Lyft, Okta, and GitHub)

~~~
lozaning
Does anyone other than Microsoft have any stake in GitHub anymore?

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JohnJamesRambo
The “Peak California” article seems very appropriate right now.

~~~
twblalock
Nah, it's just a repetition of predictions that people have been making for
decades. It has nothing new to offer -- just the same old tropes about
California's inevitable decline and the rise of alternative Silicon Valleys in
other states that never materialize.

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chejazi
RIP Say Media (/ Six Apart / Videoegg). We used to work in that building.

~~~
_eht
Did Say Media finally kick the bucket? I remember around four or five years
ago they stopped paying publishers and had to make payments with a cash flow
injection. Hundreds of thousands later they made everyone whole, but damn.
Specialized ad industry did not treat them well.

~~~
chipotle_coyote
Their web site is still around with a 2019 copyright date, so they appear to
be hanging on. I used to work at the building just north of that one (at
Realm, the mobile database company, which was located between Say and Docker's
offices), and I used to be a big fan of Movable Type, so I was always sort of
curious about them.

Say's web site, incidentally, now lists their SF office as 442 Post Street,
Suite 901. From their job listings, I get the impression that most of the
action is in the NYC and the Portland offices now, though.

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floatingatoll
I used to live in California near A-H and the traffic at that location is
easily some of the worst traffic they could possibly encounter on 280. I
believe the local transportation divisions outright list their nearby 280/Sand
Mill exchange as a critical priority to revamp. Imagine a 30 minute line of
cars where someone unsafely cuts in every second you wait.

~~~
batbomb
ah, that's because you don't know about the back way through Whiskey Hill Road
to Cañada that you should take from 5-6:30 PM if you are going north. It's not
bad if you are headed south. A-H is so far up the hill that it doesn't make
much of an impact for them though

~~~
floatingatoll
I was definitely only talking about that traffic with respect to A-H, since
this is a post about A-H, to try and offer some context for people who haven’t
experienced that for _why_ A-H might not favor what seems like prime real
estate during non-rush-hour hours.

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redwyvern
Their current office is in a pretty nice place, but it sure did feel like it
was far from the action.

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jedberg
> (The park was known until January as AT&T Park; it has since been renamed
> Oracle Park.)

I've always called it Pac Bell park to avoid confusion.

~~~
autotune
I like “the ballpark” best, that name is timeless so won’t matter which
company buys up naming rights next.

~~~
jedberg
Yeah but then I don't know if you're talking about SF or Oakland. :)

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autotune
Technically it'd be the "Oakland Coliseum," although I've never actually heard
anyone else refer to it as that as I don't know too many folks who enjoy
sports in Oakland, or I'd just call it "the Oakland Ballpark" to differentiate
heh. Once the "the ballpark" in Mission Bay starts hosting games then I think
we'll have to resort to alternative naming schemes but I'm sure something
better than "Chase Center" will be figured out.

~~~
jedberg
> although I've never actually heard anyone else refer to it as that as I
> don't know too many folks who enjoy sports in Oakland

That's what I call it. But I spent eight years living in the East Bay, so that
may be why.

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sgustard
"One of the last top-tier venture firms to resist coming to San Francisco" ...
can anyone confirm it's true that most others already have an SF office?

~~~
goseeastarwar
That's true, but you'll find that most of the senior GP's still work on Sand
Hill, because the vast majority live down there.

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cweagans
1 month later: "We really didn't expect how expensive rent was. Sadly, we must
announce that our funds have been depleted and we're officially out of the
investing game."

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pavlakoos
Weren't everybody supposed to start moving to Oakland?

~~~
gatsby
What's your point? People are moving to Oakland, and it's a lot easier to
commute from Oakland to SF than from Oakland to Palo Alto or Menlo.

~~~
barbecue_sauce
Companies, not people. (I'm assuming).

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alkibiades
So instead of maybe going anywhere else in the US/World, they decide to expand
30 miles north?

