
Bay Area attracts the most startups – but NYC, Boston, and LA are catching up - jimschley
http://www.1776.vc/reports/innovation-that-matters-2016/
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mmanfrin
If I had a dollar for every article about how [some locale] is [some vector
approaching] the Bay Area for [tech attribute], I'd be able to afford a nice
apartment in SF.

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LukaAl
"I'd be able to afford a nice apartment in SF" is the new "I would be rich"

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DarkTree
And I wish it was hyperbole

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WalterSear
It has been, for some parts of the city, up until the last few months. Very
pleasant and yet unfashionable areas, like the area around the Excelsior,
McClaren park and the Crocker Amazon, have been mostly being ignored by
hipster and techbro alike. (Prices started rocketing these last couple of
months, though, after 5+ years of ~5% price increases)

It's rather bemusing, considering all the shit and blood being hurled around.
There's, no question, a >lot< of people quietly suffering are a result of the
housing crunch in SF. But it's hard to look outside my window and not question
how much of the noise is being made by entitled children squabbling over
fashionable digs in the same four blocks of the mission. I even had one
prospective roommate who asked me to see my mail in order to 'prove' my zip
code was actually a San Francisco one.

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DarkTree
I just moved here a couple months ago and am currently searching for
apartments. There is no doubt that most people complaining of the prices are
competing for housing in the most desirable areas. However, if an area isn't
desirable to live in, it quickly slides into very undesirable, for example,
the Tenderloin. Is it livable? Yes, but for people who aren't used to living
around a bunch of drugs and homeless people, it can look pretty daunting.

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WalterSear
Except there are no homeless/sketchy people hanging out/daily crime/excess
garbage on the streets where I live. It's just unfashionable, and a few
minutes further out. My commute to the Financial District was shorter than my
colleagues in the Richmond and Sunset.

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cpprototypes
I think LA has a lot of special advantages that other regions don't have:

1) It has the same strong CA protection against non-competes as Bay Area.

2) Starting to develop some big and significant "anchor" tech companies such
as Snapchat.

3) Surrounded by good universities (UCLA, USC, Caltech)

4) Main tech hubs are Santa Monica and DTLA. These will soon be connected by a
new rail line (opening this month)

5) Housing is expensive, but not as bad as Bay Area. And rail line should
greatly expand cheaper housing options while being able to work at a tech hub.

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donretag
Is there a tech hub in DTLA? I cannot think of a single company.

There are companies in Pasadena, Glendale, Burbank, Hollywood (all combined
are still less than the westside), but DTLA seems to have nothing of note.

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xenihn
Soylent is the only company I can think of, though I'm not sure if they count.

In fact the only reason I bring it up is because it's marketed towards
developers, and the founder/CEO is (was?) a full-stack Python developer.

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soared
> Quality of life drives entrepreneurial activity

Err... no, sorry. That is obviously not true.

~~~
BadassFractal
Agreed. You're going to be sitting in a scrappy office for the next 5-10 years
of your life, why does "quality of life" matter? You're not there to retire.

I do care about conveniences like access to instacart / uber / maid services /
munchery though, as I don't have time to do any of that stuff since I'm
working all the time.

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Koshkin
But: these 5 - 10 years will be the _best_ years of your life (as you'll think
of them later)...

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projectramo
Hard to see them catching up since we don't see a trend over time.

Very curious about why people believe the cost differential between SF and,
for instance, Austin, hasn't driven more business to Austin to reach
equilibrium, and why SF continues to be so dominant compared to the others.

~~~
findjashua
Startups go where the money is. For Austin to attract startups, I think it
needs to provide access to VCs at par with sfba.

~~~
projectramo
Shouldn't the VCs move there because the startups are cheaper because
everything costs less and your $ go farther?

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findjashua
I'm not sure if expenditures related to location make a significant part of a
startup's valuation

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projectramo
That's true. I didn't mean it in that direct sense. I just thought if a VC
invested the same amount of money in 10 startups in Austin, they would last
longer, develop more product, explore more and therefore be, on average, more
successful.

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Alex3917
These lifestyle metrics are pretty dubious. Supposedly NYC is at the bottom of
the list, but it's possible to live a pretty good lifestyle here even with a
minimum wage job.

If you and your partner both make minimum wage for exempt employees in NYC
($70,200) then that's enough to afford an 800+ square foot apartment with good
public transit access in safe, walkable neighborhood with plenty of food and
recreation options. And that's without spending more than 25% of your income
on rent, as is recommended.

Sure, maybe you could theoretically do better in Denver, but what's the point
if NYC is the 'least livable' city and it's already more than good enough.

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cylinder
What are you talking about? $9 is the minimum wage. That's $37k per year
combined for two people. I assure you minimum wage workers are not living good
lifestyles here, even in The Bronx (where most of them live).

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Alex3917
The minimum wage for exempt employees in NYC is $675 per week, so for two
people that's $70,200.

[https://labor.ny.gov/legal/counsel/pdf/administrative-
employ...](https://labor.ny.gov/legal/counsel/pdf/administrative-employee-
overtime-exemption-frequently-asked-questions.pdf)

(If you take outside funding for your startup, that's going to be the minimum
you're allowed to pay yourself, and statistically it's unlikely that your
spouse is going to be making less than that.)

~~~
bskap
That's the minimum wage where your employer doesn't have to pay overtime if
you work more than 40 hours a week, not the minimum wage an employer is
allowed to pay you. It seems kind of silly to say "sure, you can afford a
decent lifestyle as long as you have two well-paying jobs".

~~~
__derek__
We're talking about technology start-up hubs. Like it or not, this is the
relevant comparison population. People creating those companies and their
partners are unlikely to be working hourly minimum wage jobs.

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ComteDeLaFere
Not sure the college degree chart is correct. Roughly 1/3 of the 25-34 age
group nationwide has a college degree, but according to this, D.C. leads the
list with 8.1% of the total city population aged 25-34 with a degree. Am I
reading this wrong?

See
[https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=27](https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=27)

~~~
oabm
I believe it's the percentage of the total city population that are both 25-34
and have a degree. Not the percentage of 25-34 year-olds with a degree.

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hacknat
These articles are so zero sum. Increased economic activity in one
geographical area might be one of the most text book cases on non-zero-sum
growth. Why compare yourself to something else? I guess there's a bit of a
competition for talent, but American mobility is going down, so it's really on
these geographical locales to take advantage.

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cloudjacker
Bay Area's benefit is the diversity of VCs. This will continue to be a
circular inclusive self fulfilling prophecy.

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rconti
The Bay Area is #2 even though we can't get gigabit internet??

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mikeyouse
Large swaths of the Bay Area can get gigabit internet.. especially at offices
where the startups will be performing their work. I'm at a non-tech company
with ~100 employees in the Presidio and a speedtest runs at 220mbps.

There's been a slow roll-out to consumers, but much of SF is now covered by
Webpass, Sonic, Monkeybrains, etc. Even Comcast is offering multiple-hundred
mbps cable internet now. The number of techies who are materially impacted by
200mbps vs. 1,000mbps is so small to be irrelevant when talking about regional
startup trends.

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epoxyhockey
The x/y axis labels are flipped on the _trends in exit volume_ graph.

