

Start-ups still don't know the way to San Jose - bjonathan
http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_15137337

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thesethings
I grew up in the Bay Area and lived in Daly City + SF among other places.
(live in Portland, OR at the moment)

I actually seriously dig downtown San Jose, would live there. It's right next
to SJSU (which yeah, is mostly commuter school, but still gives an energy.)

It does have a real downtown, bigger than any other BA city's downtown (except
SF), and it's super diverse, which is important to me. (Diverse not just in
ethnic makeup, but in terms of what everybody does for a living. SJ is not all
computer people as much as other towns up north.)

I like going to DIY/indie-ish music things... I would probably go to SF for
that, but SJ has more of a scene than most places in-between. It also has the
sort of neighborhoods/housing (not all condos, not all new basement-less
ranches) that is conducive people creating when they don't have much money.
(I've also just described Portland, hmm...)

Still, the article is fair enough: most young geeks who aren't art nerds would
probably rather live in Palo Alto than SJ. But for other types, SJ is better
than anywhere in-between except for SF. And depending on other things, it's
even better than SF.

I also like how bike friendly SJ is, but PA isn't bad for that.

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seldo
Because, as the article points out, startups tend to be run by young people,
and San Jose is really damn boring. Kind of a non-story unless you happen to
be the San Jose newspaper...

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tlrobinson
San Jose is pretty inconveniently located at the south-east end of the valley.
I'd much rather be located somewhere mid-peninsula. The extra half hour drive
adds up, especially for people commuting from SF.

Actually, I can't even think of the last time I needed to go to San Jose...

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bonsaitree
No surprises here. Nothing serves as a better poster child for that "uncanny
valley" just outside Silicon Valley than San Jose.

San Jose is literally the end-of-the-line on Caltran and has no single
"cultural" or "business" identity of its own.

In the bay area, the cream (e.g. money) continues to "rise northward". Given a
choice, why would anyone choose to live "so close, yet so far" away from the
economic or cultural center of activity?

They don't.

They choose either to pay the "Bay Tax" in terms of congestion and fixed
living costs to be "in the center" of things, xor reap the significant cost
savings, but relative isolation, of living well outside the region (Portland,
Boulder, etc.).

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seiji
San Jose is tricky. It's not a bad place to live, but few exciting things
happen here. Everybody else is, by a fact of geography, north of you.

It's not all bad though:

Pros: 10 degrees (F) warmer than SF during the day. Available parking.
Cheap(er) housing. Clean. Easy access to Cupertino, Mountain View, Palo Alto,
and Santa Clara. Easy access to mountains and off-road trails. Hockey. Large
venues for artists who don't go to Oakland or SF. Usually an older, more
established company base to be hired from (though some startups (usually
hardware based) have offices littered throughout the area).

Cons: San Jose doesn't have the "culture" vibe of SF and to get to SF is 60 to
90 minutes by train each way (which is the only sensible way to get there
during rush hour).

Why aren't there more startups in San Jose? San Jose isn't central to
anything. You're an endpoint -- and you aren't the _exciting_ endpoint. Events
don't come to you, you go to events. Mountain View? 30 miles round trip. SF?
80 miles round trip. Palo Alto? 35 miles round trip. It's great when you are
in the "boring family life" phase of your company, but it's difficult to
attract "exciting startup" phase people to the boring end of the peninsula.

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grellas
A very nice summary (I have lived in and about Silicon Valley for 42 years and
can say firsthand that your description is very accurate).

From a larger perspective, though, the last laugh is actually on San
Francisco. Back in the day, those in the City used to laugh at the whole
Peninsula and South Bay culture and used to mock San Jose in particular as
"plastic city." All the while, San Francisco stagnated while the Peninsula and
South Bay flourished, leaving the City as an also-ran in the development of
Silicon Valley (yes, it is thriving in its own way today, but the City used to
be the _only_ place where it was really worthwhile to do business and it lost
that status long, long ago and has persisted with a fixed population level
since the 1970s - no absolute growth at all, while the rest of the area has
exploded during the past several decades). In this sense, "boring" really won
the day in the end as people moved out more and more to the sticks and set up
shop there with their startups throughout the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s (only
this past decade has SF seen some measure of a tech revival).

