San Francisco?

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savedsinner777

New member
The latest Lightcone Podcast appears to paint San Francisco as the center of the startup world. Aside from the obvious confirmation bias, I wonder if this type of content is attracting creative, diverse problem solvers who are willing to eat glass for a few years? What type of intelligent and driven founder bothers with location and appearances when the problem is all that matters?

I love San Francisco, but the beauty about starting a business is the freedom to be where the problem is. If I solve a problem around forex trading then I better be in London or New York City - not the Dogpatch. If I help orange farmers to increase harvest with VR then I better be where the orange trees grow. Where is YC headed with this narrow mindset?
 
@savedsinner777 Very weird episode but a lot of their content is like this pushing SF. At the same time, it probably is the best place to be if you want to found a startup. I assume eat glass refers to the housing prices?
 
@savedsinner777 International founder here. If it were not for US visa issues, I would totally move to the Bay Area. Building those relationships with like minded people is HUGE. Startups live and die by the quality of your team and it just becomes easier when you know a bunch of IRL people around you already to consider from. It can be isolating even on a personal level if you working very far from the place where all the action is happening.
 
@mindanalyzer I hear you, and, for that matter, I think the call to come to the Bay Area is valid. I only wonder if it is beneficial to make it a condition of funding or make it a fomo when you could be based in a place that allows you to be at your best. Plus, making it all about one city, when Silicon Valley is actually an amalgamation of different cities seems to off-putting
 
@savedsinner777 So if your customers are entirely in a different area then it makes sense to base your startup in that area. But YC generally tends to fund tech companies that can have global scale and US defacto becomes the most important market there for most people in terms of TAM anyways.
 
@savedsinner777 I think you aren’t seeing the bigger picture here.

Sure we live in a really small world, and location doesn’t seem to matter as much with video calling and emails, but interpersonal relationships matter.

That late night drink you grab with a few other founders can lead to really awesome conversation, insights, and relationship building. They have reiterated the concept “manufacturing luck” - the only way you do that is by putting yourself out there and surrounding yourself with like minded people. You made meet a VC, a future hire, a company you could collaborate with, another idea!

If you are around a bunch of motivated startup founders, that will also motivate you to push forward and drive up your ambition.

They did a great job explaining all of this in the video, but you seem to be the one with the narrow mindset 🤷🏻‍♂️.
 
@speedlanepr I hope I am not narrow-minded, at least, asking for community input makes me hope I'm not, but thank you. You make some valid points. I get it networking and relationships are best developed in person, in the trenches. I agree with you that "putting yourself out there" has a huge upside. And don't get me wrong, I love San Francisco. All I'm curious about is an accelerator perpetuating the idea of location above all to local and foreign founders, when the real focal point is (or should be) building want people want. I truly believe that talented founders can be based in Stockholm, Berlin, Mexico City or anywhere else in the world really and those folks should be able to join YC without the need (!) to uproot their lives.

To your point about great job explaining it in the video, take a look at this.
 
@speedlanepr Uhh Diana literally made the reference of making work the biggest part of your life and said others find meaning outside of work. I understand founders have to make it their life but verbalizing it like that, makes you take a step back and think, “do I really want to make making money my life? Or do I want to enjoy my life with less stress and less potential for crazy upside?”
 
@savedsinner777 They told the Airbnb founders to go to NYC during their batch so that they could talk to customers. The point is, San Francisco has the most amount of people willing to eat glass along with you, which makes it easier to hire and work with like minded people. Good luck hiring someone in the Midwest with a stable job to work in your startup which is probably gonna fail.
 
@613jono I would agree if the premise of YC was different. YC predominantly accepts tried-and-tested founders and founding teams. In other words, you already have a team or know your co-founder well-enough to build a product at the time you get into YC. There's no need to work along "in person" like minded people when everybody is a Zoom call away. You don't look for other people like you do during the Antler Accelerator. In fact, you can view the relocation as a distraction from building product when you know it's only for a mere three months. Especially, if you know your customer base is in Los Angeles, Singapore, or London. Those cities, arguably, produce an equal amount of glass eaters.
 
@mindanalyzer True. What type of connections though? Connections in your industry, which could be finance (NYC/LDN/HK), entertainment (LA/ATL/BER) or any other industry? Connections to build your product, i.e. SWE? Or connections with your main customer or the market your solution is addressing? The city is awesome for finding like minded people, but is this enough to justify 30+ minutes of "you have to be here to be part of it" vibes? Especially when your market/customer is elsewhere?
 
@savedsinner777 Founder writing from SF, which I enjoy living in personally, there is definitely talent and investor density in SF, and customer density for some narrow set of companies, but I would bias towards building your business where your customers are. Unless you have to have Silicon Valley (expensive) talent or top VC money (not for every business) then I’m not sure SF/Silicon Valley is something you should prioritize. If you build a good business by being close to your customers then you can find money, if you need to raise.
 
@savedsinner777 Founder based in SF here - previously NY.

You should be there where your startup has the highest chance of succeeding (this can mean where your customers are, where your industry is flourishing most, etc.); that can be elsewhere but for tech startups this happens to be the Bay Area in most cases.

Why?

Because the city breathes tech - The tech scene is levels larger than anywhere else (in fact the biggest AI companies are based here and more are flooding in), investors are also here (and view Bay Area companies differently than those outside), there are tech events happening every night and new ideas cooking up left and right, you walk into a coffee shop and you hear about product, fundraising, building, etc., you walk around and see ads about Enterprise AI and SaaS, etc.

I could go on and on but the point is that when you surround yourself with likeminded people and an environment conducive to innovation, you’re more likely to embrace opportunities that increase your overall chance of succeeding, be it advantages to do with inflow of more ideas, better fundraising opportunities, and more.

No one is saying that you can’t build a startup outside of SF but the chances of you succeeding are statistically lower; there’re numbers to show that there are far fewer unicorns being minted outside the Bay Area and you can’t argue with that.
 
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