[rdl]

It's different in SF than NYC: we have a totally dysfunctional transit system AND shitty traffic (on purpose, due to "transit first"; they just forgot to actually use the pressure against cars to build a transit system people who can afford cars otherwise would want to use).

Facebook did the $500/mo rent subsidy in downtown PA thing for a while (2008?), but this just had the effect of raising all rents in downtown SF (within a 1 mile radius) $500. Which I hated, since I didn't work for FB.

I think it's reasonable to encourage people to have a short commute. It helps the company -- people are more likely to put in longer hours, or irregular hours, if they don't have an hour long commute through traffic to look forward to every time (my current commute takes between 40 minutes and 2h, depending on exactly when I leave. A 0900 VC meeting on sand hill basically means I need to wake up at 0500, whereas an 1100 meeting means I could theoretically sleep until 0930.)

The difference was FB was paying market+ salary, so the housing subsidy was an extra perk. In the case of offering $70k salary + $12k, I'd really just do $82k; $70k is enough below market that you don't get considered by some people.

For really early stage companies, I do like the rent house and live/work there, for 6mo. That's one of the things I regret about current startup, not doing that. (we actually live in oakland, sf, and south san jose, with an office in mountain view; it means driving 40k miles/yr each, which is stupid.)

[dennisgorelik]

Why aren't you renting a house for your office now?

[rdl]

Cofounder T owns a house and lives with his wife in SF. Cofounder E lives with GF in South San Jose. All of us are in 30s, and while I think "rent house for office and move there for 3 months" is viable, it's not viable for longer (the other two, especially, have a lot of stuff).

We still might rent a house as an office eventually, and cofounder T is moving to LAH, and I'm moving to Menlo Park, later this year. But at that point I'd rather get a light industrial building ($1-1.50/ft2) in Mountain View or Menlo or EPA or similar, build it out to spec, and use that as the office. A wall, roller gate, parking, onsite generator(s), RF tower, etc. would be awesome, along with 3-phase power, and being a bit more legitimate than using a house, long-term.

We had some confusion about SF vs. Peninsula for startups, but the "the lower on the stack you are, the closer to San Jose you should be" seems true, even in 2012 -- all the great people we've talked to are in PA or more south (all the way to Cupertino).