I'm curious as I'm studying the whole Bay Area and tech. I'm curious if the silicon valley (Redwood city, San Jose, Palo Alto, etc.) an incubator for those that are just getting started and looking to advance their careers up to SF? It seems as though many companies get their Series A or B and then decide to move up to SF. Does talent do the same? Is it that the companies are moving up for the talent? Or talent moving up because of the advanced companies. Thoughts? thanks.
yup snap is good as it is but i think we couldve hire a lot more ppl if we were in bay. so many ppl r hesitant to relocate
The way your statement is worded is implying sf is the end destination and it's not for most. It's just a matter of lifestyle preference. Sf has one set of benefits vs the burbs.
agreed
Been here for decades. Look at the Bay in tiers. In SF you have all of the modern "frontier tech" companies. AR/VR/MR, Machine learning, ai, and most of your most recent unicorns, like DoorDash up there. Next layer down, south San Francisco houses all of your biotech companies. Genentech, Counsyl etc. Then you have your Palo Alto/MTV internet social giants. Facebook, google, LinkedIn etc. As you approach San Jose, you have the traditional Silicon Valley giants, Apple, HP, Yahoo. Past them, you find the old legacy hardware companies, like Sandisk, Marvel, etc. What's interesting is where the VC's are situated. Grand majority of them are right in the middle, Menlo Park. And they almost always have a San Francisco office that they split time from. Makes sense if you see where all of the innovation is distributed. I don't remember hearing about a VC that matters being stationed in San Jose.
Agreed. Also more funding means you can afford space in SF. Usually companies that raise a C, D, E level round, heads down to South Bay to build our bigger offices.
Or you can pull a Glassdoor and just go north, past the Golden Gate Bridge to build your office in the woods.
I won't work in sf, period. Well maybe if there was door to door helicopter service. The south peninsula is where it is at. SVL, MTV, PA, Los Altos, menlo, Cupertino. Not much of value came from elsewhere. In the entire universe.
LOL. how things change. over time the center of gravity has been slowly moving northward. in part this is just because tech has been expanding through smartphones, apps and everything becoming software. there are lots of significant tech companies in the city now. salesforce, Twitter, Uber, zendesk, twilio, and many more I can't even remember.
I think most of the growth in jobs is still in MTV, Menlo Park and Cupertino. A 20% growth in Apple HC dwarves all SF startups combined.
south Bay has high tech companies whereas sf has low tech. for example in South Bay many of the tech companies are doing ML, AI, hardware, mechanical engineering. also stuff that is hard science, where the technology itself is invented. sf has more low tech. things where you apply tech to common business problems. aka Airbnb didn't invent a new technology, they applied technology to solve the rental maket. same goes for slack and Uber. sf companies are more likely to have explosive growth compared to South Bay companies.
Yes well when your base revenues are zero, your growth percentage is infinite.
SF is not a good place to raise a family. I know it's very different when you are single. Eventually, successful startups become big companies and open office in the valley. Uber has office in PA now.
The center of gravity has shifted from the peninsula the the city. Companies that were founded 10+ years ago (Google, Facebook, eBay, Yahoo) tend to be based on the peninsula. Newer companies (Airbnb, Stripe, Twitter, Pinterest) tend to founded in the city and stay and grow there.
yes. especially for younger genetations, its hard to attract them if ur office isnt located in SF unless your company is like top tech like goog fb