Garry's SF Guide to Where Your Startup Should Be
maps.google.com
maps.google.com
The food scene isn't as great as Berkeley, but rent is 30% cheaper, and there are far fewer yuppy moms walking around with kids in strollers, which makes me happy. There has been a pretty solid core of hackers moving here in the past two years, generally people like me in our early '30s who have been in SF for a decade+ and have finally stopped drinking the "San Francisco is worth $4k for a 750 ft^2 apartment" koolaid.
I worked at Cloudera's office in FiDi over the summer and liked the area a lot. Super-convenient via BART (less convenient than SOMA via Caltrain, but one could always transfer to BART at Millbrae). Right in the middle of everything. Good food options. Felt pretty safe walking to BART after dark because there's enough people around.
Pros: Lower housing/office rental costs than most of SF/SV, nice ocean, less crowded coffee shops, lots of UCSC students willing to work as cheap summer interns in return for not having to commute across the hill, lower salaries for senior engineers for the same reason if you find one[1], substantial local indie-gaming startup scene (Team Meat, Chronic Logic, Gaijin Games, Graeme Devine), laid-back lifestyle.
Cons: Further from the VC and most of the tech/meetup action, SF/SV people consider it infinitely far away, harder to find senior engineers, few local peers if you aren't in the indie-game space, laid-back lifestyle.
[1] There are a lot of engineers who live in SC, either because they prefer it to living in the Valley, or because they already established families there back when there were more tech jobs (SCO, etc.). Most now commute to Mountain View, San Jose, or Cupertino, but many would take a substantial paycut to not have to make that commute every day, which seems like a potential arbitraging opportunity for the right startup.
The area around 3rd and 20th is actually pretty well connected transit-wise (near 22nd st caltrain, the T line, and three or four bus lines), is a 30 minute walk from soma, and is still pretty cheap. And although the real estate prices are going up (along with the rest of the city) there's still a lot of underutilized land to expand into that should act as a buffer on rent prices. If I were looking for a place to start an office I would look there first.
google maps: http://g.co/maps/dqmrn
walkscore: http://www.walkscore.com/score/3rd-and-20th-st-san-francisco...
But there isn't a lot right there, it always takes at least fifteen minutes go get where the action is (i.e. the Mission). I recommend it for anyone who commutes to Stanford, Palo Alto, Mountain View, etc. but wants to live in the city... but if I didn't have my commute I probably would have lived in the Mission/Castro/Hayes Valley/etc.
And soma looks like $6-10k for the equivalent thing (although soma tends to be 1-2 bedroom places).
It would seem that "far from SF" is countered by "population of monied students".
Berkeley is more expensive than Silicon Valley, but it has all of the amenities of a major metropolis (except late night anything) while being quite small in the scheme of things. It's still absolutely not a place to go for a way cheap alternative to a city, as it's still one of the most expensive areas in the USA.
Travel to SV via public transit is a 2-2.5 hr trip door-to-door (maybe a little more, depending where, and if you need to walk). If commuting is only a once in a while thing, it's not too painful with a Clipper Card but maybe expensive.
For me the greatest advantage of Berkeley is the opportunity for amazing outdoor recreation, which is a boon if you enjoy nature and want to keep in shape while avoiding the gym. You can live literally minutes away from trail heads into the hills for hiking or biking. Lunchtime trail running? Not a problem. Also at Berkeley Marina you have one of the best locations for sailing in the Bay Area.
Access to healthy food is also a huge plus. I've never seen a wider selection of reasonably priced vegetables than at the produce section of the Berkeley Bowl.
And, there's far more sunshine than anywhere else on the Peninsula north of Millbrae.
Lastly, I agree with your comments and disagree with the author's regarding the commute to SV. An occasional commute to SV is very doable by BART and Caltrain, but a ridiculously stressful waste by car. Just bring your earplugs for those acoustically torturous minutes in the Transbay Tunnel.
pg's thesis about Silicon Valley is that it's mostly the about the investors. I assume that the talent pool is willing to do a BART ride to the East Bay for the right startup. So is being smack dab in the middle of the cluster that vital to success? How does the math work out?
I'd consider anything west of 6th in SOMA to be considerably sketchier than any part of the Mission.
Not sure if this list is supposed to be a guide on where to put your office in SF, or where to live. He calls out west SOMA as "most soulless area to live in SF" - well yeah, it's the financial district, you put your office there, you don't live there.
Besides, that title more rightfully belongs to the Marina district.
Meanwhile, in the last year there have been multiple assaults, robberies and a few rapes in the part of Mission that you've called safe. YMMV.
The map bears itself out: http://www.trulia.com/crime/San_Francisco,CA,SoMa/
Somewhat crime-related but non-violent - besides the BART stops general hygiene in the Mission is not bad, whereas most of the main thoroughfares of west SOMA consistent reek of shit and piss.
> "Meanwhile, in the last year there have been multiple assaults, robberies and a few rapes in the part of Mission"
... and there haven't been in SOMA?
In any case, this is all pedantics. San Francisco is overall a crime-ridden city where its monied residents waffle between pretending crime doesn't exist, and mocking people who are concerned about it.
Of course no neighborhood is crime-free, but you're blowing the danger of SOMA entirely out of proportion based on your perceptions of aesthetics.
Palo Alto prices per square foot have gone up ridiculously in the last year as well. Seems to average around $60-80+ per square foot per year. There's hardly any space in downtown PA left unless you're willing to include your arms and legs, too...
New listings show up on Craigslist everyday. Seems you get the best deals there if you can grab a sublease which is what my current company was able to do. Alternatively, another great resource for commercial space searching is: http://www.loopnet.com/
Good luck!
I would say he went over the top on describing SOMA. It is still dead.
There is already plenty of "legitimate" foot traffic there in the daytime from all the government and government-affiliated offices. That doesn't seem to have helped.
The homeless and addicts congregate there because of a combination of housing policy and placement of social services. As long as those remain, I'm not sure if all the startups of the Bay could displace them.
Note: I'm not advocating removing housing/services for the homeless, but rather that forcibly moving a bunch of startups there will just mean you'll add a lot of startups into the mix of sketchiness. It won't get rid of the sketchiness.
Guess I'm not awesome. I'll just continue to live in the south bay under a rock.
Any price range info by chance?