[philsnow]

> The commute over the bridges is terrible, so with the bulk of investment capital and experienced engineers living on the peninsula (and oftentimes more down by Palo Alto & Menlo Park than in SF), it remains difficult to scale East Bay companies.

The reverse commute (peninsula to east bay in the morning, east bay to peninsula in the evening) is perfectly fine, as long as you don't have to take 880 anywhere. If you can avoid 880, that reverse commute can be serene and almost surreal (as you whiz past gridlock coming in the other direction every day).

There are a bunch of industrial parks right over the bridge in Newark that seem like great places for a new small company.

[rconti]

Yeah, there are plenty of "good" reverse commutes in the bay area still. The only problem is it only takes one chunk of "bad" road (eg, as you mention, avoid 880, or going the 'wrong' direction on any piece of road, or being near a major interchange) that not THAT many people have a truly 100% reverse commute. Ours is, and yeah, it's pretty funny to cruise at 90 while the traffic coming the other way is stopped.