Why Peter Thiel Is Leaving Silicon Valley | Hacker News Reader

Why Peter Thiel Is Leaving Silicon Valley

money.cnn.com

28 pointsmillisecond15 comments

Peter also thinks the Valley has become too mono-cultural and the cost of living is making the whole area more sclerotic, less vital.

This is a big problem with many big cities. The cost of living, primarily due to property and rent prices makes them less innovative and stagnant places to live. You need to be able to breath, not be stifled.

> makes them less innovative and stagnant places to live. You need to be able to breath, not be stifled.

I accept the critique about cost of living, especially the Bay Area for those with families, but this statement lacks a coherent line of reasoning, and seems like a compound non-sequitir. The vast majority of innovations in recent times have emerged from cities.

Without cheap rent, it's very difficult to experiment. In places where space is plentiful and inexpensive, you can try setting up a quirky shop or cafe. In an overcrowded and expensive market like SF, you can't rent commercial property without a proven business plan. Where rent is cheap, you can spend a summer "funemployed", work on your hobby project and pick up a couple bucks doing odd jobs. If you pay $4,000/mo for an apartment, you need to be employed full-time all the time.

Personally I find that innovative ideas can be brought to maturity in places where you can find people to develop them, often in cities. But the germ of the ideas will happen when you have some time and space to yourself. I think there's a happy medium where there's access to people and infrastructure, but not the oppressive overdevelopment of Silicon Valley.

> In an overcrowded and expensive market like SF, you can't rent commercial property without a proven business plan.

Unless you have capital from another source (usually arbitraged between industries or by geography), you can't really do this anywhere without a business plan. Even in a cheap area, nobody is going to open a deli or cornershop without a plan for paying the rent.

> If you pay $4,000/mo for an apartment

You don't have to pay this much for housing, unless you are completely inflexible about the location, the size of the place, or having roommates. And if that's the case, it's a bit of a lifestyle choice.

> Personally I find that innovative ideas can be brought to maturity in places where you can find people to develop them, often in cities. But the germ of the ideas will happen when you have some time and space to yourself.

Those sound like very idiosyncratic requirements for innovation, and it sounds like it's mostly a lifestyle choice. If it works for you, that's truly great.

Many people find that the germs of ideas come from participating in environment where related ideas are constantly being shared among a group of people. This can happen in any thriving community. That could be a dense city, or it could be (and often is) a university campus or research lab. Also, it's not limited to technology. The same could be said of music, literature, etc.

And if you are in a city, there's nothing stopping you from heading to open spaces for inspiration. That's also a common practice.

> but not the oppressive overdevelopment of Silicon Valley.

SV has it's issues for sure, but I wouldn't throw all cities under the bus with it.

> Even in a cheap area, nobody is going to open a deli or cornershop without a plan for paying the rent.

Sure, the question is how experimental of a plan can you attempt. In SF 2018: not very. I know people who pooled their money for an experimental space in SF several years ago at $1/sq. foot, and broke even. At 5x or 10x those rates today, this is now a lot harder.

> SV has it's issues for sure, but I wouldn't throw all cities under the bus with it.

My critique is specifically of the negative effects of overcrowding and overcapitalization in the SF Bay Area. By extension this would presumably apply to other places like Manhattan with similar conditions. I'm definitely interested in finding other cities with the networking advantages but that manage to strike a balance with livability. Austin has been mentioned already, although some folks will complain they're headed in the same direction.

Apple was born in a garage. Back then, from what I have read, SV was in the margins and two working class kids had that space to experiment. Now, a garage in the same city would probably cost more per month than my entire flat.

Also, Atari (where both Steves contracted) had a freewheeling sex and drugs culture that was at least as subversive in its time as Thiel's Christian/Libertarian views are now. He's already made his penny but, being a human being, he likely doesn't enjoy the condemnation he faces in SF any more than Jobs would have enjoyed living in a religious town in the deep south.

> L.A. is also less out of touch and it's a better place to connect with the rest of the country.

Never thought I'd ever hear that coming from anyone, much less Peter Thiel.

Tim Ferriss has mentioned his move from Silicon Valley Ron austin a few times on his podcast. But hasn’t gone into detail as to why.

Not being in Silicon Valley, what is the best way to evaluate the environment?

This article from BI goes into detail why. It’s basically just ripped from his Reddit AMA: http://www.businessinsider.com/why-tim-ferriss-left-silicon-...

I’ve lived in Austin for a decade and don’t really find it open minded. I mean the local Republican group on meetup.com has a private membership because they are too scared of being doxxed...

FWIW I’ve always voted Democratic but now the party is getting overwhelmed by those leaving the Republican party and diluting what was once the workers party with tiny little neoliberal solutions to every large problem.

I had thought that he was moving to New Zealand, I guess that was temporary? Is LA that politically different than SF, or are there other reasons? This is all coming from an anonymous source, and not Thiel himself which surprises me, as he doesn't seem to be one who shies away from making his opinion known.

I think he got NZ citizenship as a "the world has gone to nuclear hell/the proletariat are uprising" backup plan, but never intended to move their full time.

Good riddance, if we're lucky he'll move to another country.

tl;dr: he's moving to Hollywood to work on a "media endeavor," and also he's a pariah for backing Trump.

Great so what policies does his political ideology have to fix the problems he's whining about?

Good for him. I guess he's moving from a politically correct place (obviously negative) to the place that's correct enough, politically, for him (obviously positive).

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