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Comment by endlessvoid94 | Hacker News Reader

I dunno.

The incentives of living in SF versus, say, Mountain View or Palo Alto seem to be nightlife. And most founders I know aren't really going out very much. They're too busy with their startups. It would seem Mountain View is more ideal for that.

Maybe MV is better for super-early stage startups with just two or three cofounders, and as soon as hiring occurs then SF becomes more appropriate.

It seems to me that SF has more distractions. I of course could be totally wrong, and I'm curious why, if so, the trend continues.

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No, the main incentive for living in SF for me is not driving. I work at Dolores Labs and live 5' away. Not worrying about driving makes a huge difference in lifestyle. It leaves more time for fun / productivity. It also makes it much easier to go to meetups.

Good point.

Is that enough to make the city more attractive? Isn't office space cheaper in MV or PA?

SF actually has an abundance of reasonably priced office space. I don't know the medians, but a quick glance at http://www.rofo.com/CA/Mountain-View and http://www.rofo.com/CA/San-Francisco shows similar price to square foot ratios.

The rates are comparable per sqft if you're willing to be in a seedy part of town (mission, west soma). If you want to be in the nicer parts of SF, if you can even find a good listing, it will cost way more.

That said I'm super happy with workout out of the mission near the 24th street bart. And it's very affordable.

Office space is reasonably comparable.

Housing is phenomenally more expensive, especially when compared to MV or Sunnyvale.

I've been living in Chicago for four years now without a car. I'm getting one soon, but only for road trips and visiting my parents.

I cannot express myself emphatically enough about how wonderful it is to not have to rely on a car. I've saved so much money and headache, and it's been such a freeing experience, I don't know if I could ever go back to having even a short driving commute.

In the past three months I've lived in Palo Alto, SF, and now Menlo Park, and have been to just about every stop on the Caltrain from SF to San Jose.

SF may be easier to get along without a car, but I don't find SV particularly difficult. Some combination of Caltrain + Zipcar + Uber + taxi + bus + bike + short walks is always available.

The only hitch in that is caltrain stops running at midnight. Even if you're not out partying, but just having a later dinner, you always have to keep an eye on the time, and make sure you're in the cab (muni, etc) before 11:30 to get on that last train of the night.

Yeah. Though actually living north (say, in SF) and being social south is even worse. The last northbound train leaves Palo Alto at 11pm (every day but Sunday, when it's 9:30).

Just like there are diminishing returns coding for many hours without resting, trying to build a business without having a social life will ultimately have damaging effects. Knowing how to communicate is half the battle and you're not going to learn how to do that sitting in front of a screen all day.

I think we've all read the stories of founders not sleeping for days and ruining their personal lives in the process and I just don't see how any of that is necessary.

San Francisco's distractions should be seen as a benefit, not a hindrance.

I live in NYC now and have spent enough time in SF, MV, and PA to know what it would be like to live there. It’s certainly expensive in Manhattan, but there are a number of advantages:

* I don’t need a car. This has been as freeing for me as for others.

* I don’t worry at all about logistics, ever. The subways run all night, taxis are ubiquitous, and walking is safe and pleasant.

* Everything is close by, so I don’t need to worry about meetups at the opposite end of the bay.

* I can find good food nearby regardless of the time of day. This city never fully sleeps, which is great because you can set your own schedule.

The city is also distracting, but after a while you get used to it and build up the self-discipline to stay in and work. I’m not convinced this is any harder here than it would be in any other place that I had friends.

+1 to the meetup issue. Thankfully, most meetups in NYC are in Manhattan or near-Brooklyn. Most times it'll be a 30 minute passive commuting commitment anywhere you go, so it's definitely better than bay area.

I lived in the East Bay, and it was such a pain to go to any Silicon Valley anything.

The most important thing to me in SF is having options when I don't feel like working. I can walk to the park where beautiful girls do non-programming things like laughing while blowing bubbles! I can go get a beer and watch a movie. I can walk and grab a quick bite at taqueria cancun. I can go to a club. I just love the energy and excitement here. I've met some of the most cultured and interesting people in SF, and I wouldn't trade those experiences for anything. :)

I'm in the valley for a visit right now.

My impressions: Mountain View and Palo Alto are beautiful, wonderful places.

SF is a scary place. It's an old city, and it reeks of shit. I was going through some neighborhood once by car and everything around me felt like GTA4.

I took this picture about a block or two away from the caltrain station

http://i53.tinypic.com/2ivy8mv.jpg

I've been out of California for almost 20 years, so maybe things have changed, but when I lived in Silicon Valley and worked at a small young company I often wondered if it would make sense for small young companies to hop over the mountains to the San Joaquin valley.

Suppose, for instance, you were in Merced (as it was 20 years ago--it has changed a lot since then I believe). Not much nightlife or culture, but most of the time you'd be working too hard for that anyway--you'd only have time for the occasional movie and Merced had sufficient movie theaters to get all the major releases.

When you could get a weekend off, you'd just drive up to San Francisco and stay for the weekend in a nice hotel.

The difference in housing costs between Silicon Valley and Merced were such that even if you were buying a house in Merced, you'd be paying so much less than rent on a decent Silicon Valley apartment that even if you headed up to San Francisco every other weekend for the culture and stayed in an upscale hotel and ate at good restaurants, you'd still come out ahead. For variety, instead of heading up to San Francisco, Yosemite isn't too far from Merced.

call me naive, but other than YC & 500 startups, when i think mountain view, i think the startups turned corporations (google, linkedin, etc).

i think mountain view is much more of a family friendly local, compared with SF's younger scene that's always on the go.

i agree with @diego about meetups/networking being a huge asset for all the entrepreneurs trying to get their shit off the ground in SF.

This is what my company did.

Honestly, San Francisco is far too expensive to live and work in if you are self-funding.

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