Starting this summer, YC will be in California year-round
ycombinator.com
ycombinator.com
Out of curiosity, from what you can tell, has the economy affected the gap between the two locales at all? Did the already timid Boston investors just give up entirely? Or has it been pretty proportional?
Boston VCs may actually be more interested in YC alumni lately, but I think that's because they only recently discovered YC.
With angels it's even harder to tell, because the Boston angel community is even weaker than the VCs. If I recall correctly, only one YC alum has been talking to a Boston angel lately, and he backed out of the deal in a pretty lame way. But with only one data point it's hard to say whether it's Boston, or the economy, or just that guy.
I agree this move is better for the statups. I also agree that Palo Alto is better for kids than Cambridge. I think Arlington is slightly better than Palo Alto though.
And let me congratulate you again on the upcoming addition. Kids are great.
But I'm not sure that we'd have much luck convincing the expecting couple.
Congrats!
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=444217
Arlington, MA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arlington,_Massachusetts
Number 2, the weather.
I liked Arlington when I lived there: Short bus ride to Cambridge, walk to the Red Line in good weather, bike path, wide streets, walkable, not too urban, not too suburban, not too expensive...
But Palo Alto has most of that plus startups and sun, so it certainly makes sense.
Perhaps not so crazy. Last year I discovered two other Ruby programmers (one at another startup, one at a more established firm) among the parents in my son's kindergarten class.
And this was a reasonably sized class of ~20 kids.
Is time for an Arlington YC meetup?
We had a good crowd last night. I need to buy more chairs.
I work in Arlington, and live just one town over. Yup, Ruby. An Arlington meetup might be fun, I never seem to be able to make the Boston Ruby events in Cambridge.
no answer to the weather issue, however.
Does everyone get soft when they spend time out west? I've lost half my family to that coast and they all complain about the sort of weather that is optimal for sledding.
Doesn't anyone else miss having seasons?
Here are historical records for downtown SF:
http://ggweather.com/sf/daily.html
(2005-2006 was especially rainy; was that when you set your 'norm'?)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/03/31/...
You say that like it's a bad thing.
-Daniel Tosh
Yes. I'll probably never be able to live in the UK again, to be honest.
In all seriousness, there is seasonal variation both in temperature (which the East coast also has) and in precipitation (which the East coast doesn't have), but they tend not to vary so severely, and there also tends to be less intra-seasonal variance, either. You won't find Seattle going from 80 degrees and muggy to 30 degrees and snowing over the course of 12 hours -- this happened while I was in Boston in April of a year that hopefully someone else here can fill in.
It might be a bit soft, but I think of it as removing weather from the list of things that distract you from more important work.
Then again, my earliest memories are from here: http://tinyurl.com/cbp4lf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_climate
When I moved out east this year I was shocked that nobody here seems to know what the weather's like on the west coast. I suppose that's because it's never covered in the national news.
If you want snow, the Sierras, which are two hours away from the SF Bay Area, get 20-40 FEET a year, with a 10+ foot snow pack. http://www.eldoradocountyweather.com/donner.html isn't even the place that gets the most snow.
But once you learn to see changes in subtle things such as the color tone of Diamond Head (it's greener in winter), and also not to forget checking calenders, you can even work here.
Of course, I didn't have the budget (or the correct commute) to live in Palo Alto when I was in CA. Palo Alto is a fine place, no question.
From someone who has never lived below the mason-dixon, no.
The food sucks in suburban Massachusetts though. There're like no decent restaurants in any of those town centers, and you've got a point about them being dull. Some decent places in Cambridge, but then you're back to being too urban.
The one thing I really like about the Boston suburbs is the abundance of greenery. A lot of houses are built on an acre or more, with buffer forests because the streets never run straight in Massachusetts. AFAICT these just don't exist in Silicon Valley until you get out to the foothills, and those communities don't really have downtown areas at all.
I think I would have liked growing up around the bay area better than any other place I've lived. Skate parks are everywhere (I would have killed for a decent skate park when I was a kid), there's an ocean an hour drive away, mountains not much further, a big and really interesting city is an hour train ride away, the weather is nice enough to go outside almost year round (it's maybe a little chilly for me now, since I spent 10+ years in Texas, but I would have loved it when I was a kid growing up on the east coast), there's a reasonable music and arts scene (mainly in the city, but near enough to feel it and take part), the small towns around here are extremely walkable/bikeable, and there's good mass transit for the places you can't get on foot or bike. Palo Alto is not a suburban wasteland, and yet, there are lots of places where it's quiet and low traffic.
When you include private schools, though, I don't know how things stack.
Just kidding, but I was looking forward to you guys returning to Boston.
Oh well, more excuse to come visit all our friends in SF soon!
http://ticketstumbler.com/new-stuff/
But if we had spawned in CA we would have required funding. So far, we've been able to get by without it.
To soon to tell if for better or worse :).
As someone who has happily chosen to raise her children in Cambridge, we all do what we think is best for our kids. Suburbia is not for us; Huron Village is about as suburban as I can stand. :)
Not to worry about Boston, there's actually an interesting announcement that will help fill the YC gap that is coming in the next 60 days.
Also looking forward to having the additional opportunity per year to apply to YC. :)
When we were expecting out first baby, everyone we met and talked to advised us to get as much sleep as possible, because it will be a bit difficult to get a good night sleep for the first few weeks/months after the baby arrives. I won't advise that to you guys, because I couldn't really understand how sleeping longer for a few weeks/months now will help you sleep less for a few weeks/months later on.
We're applying this summer, and while we're on the East Coast we were wondering whether Boston's not being a start-up town was good or not. Guess now we don't have to worry about that.
Edit: any info on when exactly the application round opens?
Northern California probably has a stronger network of homeschoolers than greater Boston as well, although both places are all right in that regard.
The first of many kids hopefully (assuming you want many kids, that is).