

Y Combinator Partner Harj Taggar: "San Francisco is Becoming Silicon Valley" - ryannielsen
http://www.7x7.com/tech-gadgets/y-combinator-partner-harj-taggar-san-francisco-becoming-silicon-valley

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Alex3917
"Now, they are starting with both iPhone and android apps, saying they need to
nail mobile distribution, and saying that maybe will never build a website at
all, because it's unnecessary."

So I've heard that in Vermont the local tradition is to build the barn first,
and then live in the barn until you can afford to build the house. This seems
like the digital equivalent.

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endlessvoid94
I dunno.

The incentives of living in SF versus, say, Mountain View or Palo Alto seem to
be nightlife. And most founders I know aren't really going out very much.
They're too busy with their startups. It would seem Mountain View is more
ideal for that.

Maybe MV is better for super-early stage startups with just two or three
cofounders, and as soon as hiring occurs then SF becomes more appropriate.

It seems to me that SF has more distractions. I of course could be totally
wrong, and I'm curious why, if so, the trend continues.

~~~
diego
No, the main incentive for living in SF for me is _not driving_. I work at
Dolores Labs and live 5' away. Not worrying about driving makes a huge
difference in lifestyle. It leaves more time for fun / productivity. It also
makes it much easier to go to meetups.

~~~
endlessvoid94
Good point.

Is that enough to make the city more attractive? Isn't office space cheaper in
MV or PA?

~~~
drp
SF actually has an abundance of reasonably priced office space. I don't know
the medians, but a quick glance at <http://www.rofo.com/CA/Mountain-View> and
<http://www.rofo.com/CA/San-Francisco> shows similar price to square foot
ratios.

~~~
acgourley
The rates are comparable per sqft if you're willing to be in a seedy part of
town (mission, west soma). If you want to be in the nicer parts of SF, if you
can even find a good listing, it will cost way more.

That said I'm super happy with workout out of the mission near the 24th street
bart. And it's very affordable.

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Aloisius
As crazy as it is to hire in San Francisco, hiring in the Valley is several
times harder. Being in downtown SF, I really don't have to compete with
Facebook and Google for engineers, especially anyone coming from the North or
East Bay.

Add in a huge amount of local design talent, a city that people outside of
California want to live in and would be willing to move to and engineers that
are generally happier/more well-rounded.

I honestly can't come up with a good reason to be down in the Valley.

~~~
speckledjim
No comparison for me.

PA / MV are lovely small friendly towns with streets you can find a good array
of shops, restaurants etc, lots of sunshine.

SF is a cloudy windy big city with lots of homeless people begging, run down
streets, etc

Just providing a counterpoint. If I had to work in SF, I'd be miserable.

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kloncks
_One factor in YC's boom is the added incentive that every startup accepted by
YC automatically now receives a $150,000 investment when they graduate,
courtesy of Yuri Milner and YC founder Ron Conway's SV Angel fund._

YC founder Ron Conway?

~~~
prayag
Ron Conway is also an investor in YCombinator. Source:
<http://www.crunchbase.com/company/y-combinator>

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mlinksva
It feels like that, but some data say SF as of a few months ago had less tech
jobs than in 2000, see [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-
bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/03/26/...](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-
bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/03/26/BUG41IHABH.DTL)

Here are the comments I left on that article, with one line of context added
between them. I got no response on sfgate (no surprise!)

...

I'm surprised that the number of tech jobs in SF still hasn't surpassed the
2000 level. SF still felt like a tech backwater then; now it doesn't so much.
However, I believe the research. Likely the SF tech workers were just really
poorly deployed in 2000.

I imagine fairly small in number of employees, but the nonprofit tech sector
in SF has also become really important over the past half-decade, in
particular Wikimedia Foundation and Public Library of Science. The Internet
Archive is an old stalwart that has recently expanded. (I work for a smaller
related nonprofit, Creative Commons, that moved from Stanford to SF in 2004,
and (sadly) is moving from SF to Mountain View (where Mozilla is another
significant tech nonprofit) next month.) I think there's an interesting
cluster here.

Clearly Oakland/Berkeley/Emeryville is the future. Because I say.

Re number and % of tech jobs in SF in 2000 vs 2011:

(34116/.144)-(32180/.174)=51974

Has SF lost >50k "nongovernment office" jobs in ~10 years or am I missing
something?

...

Related to my first comment, Mozilla is opening an SF office this summer
[http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-
bin/blogs/techchron/detail?entry_i...](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-
bin/blogs/techchron/detail?entry_id=87452)

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kordless
I've been living in Orinda/Moraga for 4 years now and make the daily commute
to the city. It's 25 minutes by BART, and another 15 or so combined on both
ends to make the connection. Having the city and office so close, yet
basically living in the boonies (with the cows and turkeys) rocks.

~~~
neilk
I have done the math on this.

For a SOMA commute during peak hours, living near the BART station in Orinda
is more convenient than most of San Francisco.

<http://brevity.org/pic/misc/downtown-transit-eastbay.png>

(Explanation of method here:
<http://brevity.org/code/google/transitheatmap.html>)

~~~
usaar333
Really cool calculation. This is to get to Embarcadero Bart I assume?

One thing about SF public transit I've learned: Aside from BART, it is slow.
If you live within 4 miles of your destination, biking most likely is faster.
(Case in point: I live in a 35-50 min grid. By bike I'd get to the Embarcadero
BART in under 25 minutes.

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SoftwarePatent
"At YC," says Taggar, "Every round we have more applications. But we only
accept between 2.5 and 3.5 percent of those who apply. The first round this
year we had 44 companies; this round we have 64 companies [almost a 50 percent
increase]."

I haven't seen this number before (2.5-3.5%). If they accepted 2.5-3.5% when
they accepted 44 companies, that's 1760-1257 applications. If they accepted
2.5-3.5% when they accepted 64 companies, that's 2560-1829 companies. So this
comment gives us a range of between 1257-2560 applications.

Good luck everyone! :) I'm applying this winter.

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tzs

       Now, they are starting with both iPhone and android apps,
       saying they need to nail mobile distribution, and saying
       that maybe will never build a website at all, because it's
       unnecessary.
    
       This is especially true with location-based services like
       photo-sharing, since the website is secondary, just in the
       background.
    

I'm surprised this would apply to photo-sharing. If I'm taking photos and
sharing them, I want some control over the organization and layout, the
ability to add annotations, and stuff like that. I don't want to do that from
my phone--it is fine for quickly uploading them into some kind of default
setup, but I want to manage my information on my nice big monitor.

