[myself248]

This was something that blew my mind when I visited out there. Visited every space I could, and the startup/commercial culture was just incredibly pervasive. Couldn't talk about a cool idea for more than a minute or two without some tech bro trying to monetize it.

Maybe that's someone's jam, but I just wanted to hang out with some nerds that reminded me of back home. Everywhere else I've traveled, I could visit the local hackerspace and get my fix, but the bay area was..... different.

[weld]

In the 90s the L0pht was not commercial and was funded as a hobby. Nearing 2000 we wanted to make it our day job and not a hobby and transition from to jobs we all had working for someone else. It was the beginning of my journey to entrepreneurship but this transition was very rocky. Manu didn’t survive. It was a huge learning experience documented in Space Rogue’s book.

[escapecharacter]

Part of why I moved out of the Bay Area and to NYC!

I'm not anti-monetization by any means, but so often I'd end up in conversations that the other partner wanted to be a startup pitch, and I wanted to just talk about something cool. There's so much premature optimization of monetization out there.

[lasermatts]

+1 for the New York tech scene. I spent a few months going to Meetup events around Manhattan and Brooklyn and the people were so friendly and full of ideas. Really great environment.