

Ask HN: You arrived at Silicon Valley.  What do you do next? - diminium

You step off the airplane/bus/train with your one way ticket.  Your now in Silicon Valley, capital of the start-up world.<p>You have nothing except motivation to create something to change the world, a bit of technical knowledge to work your way around REST, and enough money for cheap motel room for a day or two.<p>Other than to look for a hidden park benches to sleep in and looking for the bus map, what do you do next?  Where do you go next?  Where do you stop by?
======
codeonfire
You go to the homeless shelter. You stop by the community colleges job office
and construction sites looking for day labor jobs so that you can buy food.
You go to the park all day and hang around the water fountain where you at
least have water. Later you panhandle at the freeway exit ramp. After a few
days you get chased out of a coffee shop due to your appearance and smell.

------
Toph
1\. I would have highly recommended you work on whatever project on the side
BEFORE moving to Silicon Valley. Get feedback, build a prototype, launch, fix
bugs, etc, and go somewhere with it.

2\. THEN I would have recommended moving at that point, finding other startup
folks looking for roommates, and join in. Gives you like minded folks who
hopefully will turn out to be good roommates.

3\. Finally, I'd continue working on said project and start hitting up
meetups/events to spread the word while getting feedback and making new
friends along the way.

Given that isn't what you're asking and say you are in SV without a project or
anything going on, first order is still to find a place to live and an income
source. Then proceed to work on said idea (as mentioned above) and go mingle
to get some friends.

~~~
eshvk
Assuming OP can program, finding a job in one of the code mines isn't going to
be hard. What is going to be hard is:

1\. Finding a place to live (The SF market is god awful. Living in the
southbay without a car will limit any "networking" opportunities.)

2\. Living within your means. We are not in Kansas anymore, that 6 figure
salary in the code mines will vanish quickly when you add up rent, living
expenses and entertainment (Oh, also if you come from a state with no state-
tax, we have those around here too, fun!)

3\. Manage to find time to hack on this project that is going "to change the
world". At first, you will definitely want to go to every meetup in town and
every beering event that startups provide, you will end up not having time to
actually build a product. So dedicate sometime to do that too. :-)

------
Killswitch
You take that couple of days work of motel rooms and buy a plane ticket back
to Iowa and you go back and stop being foolish and have something worthwhile
before you move to the Valley. The Valley doesn't make or break you, what you
bring with does.

