[timr]

"It's easier to make this work when the company is smaller."

Oh jeez. The way people talk about it now, you'd think that San Francisco was some sort of eternal pre-requisite for founding a startup, rather than the flavor of the moment. Startups didn't want to be here until a few years ago, and it isn't exactly a practically motivated decision today. Startups get founded here mostly because a certain subset of 20-somethings want to live in the city.

[canterburry]

That cracks me up too. nothing has convinced me more that you can be successful outside of the valley than coming to the valley.

[wildgift]

I don't know what SF is like now, but CNet, Wired, Craigslist, and a few other companies started out there. There was also Hyperreal and SF.NET, the ravers, and Mondo 2000 up in Berkeley too. Maybe it wasn't the same kind of startup or the same people, but there it was.

Anyway, I was almost instantly burned out on that hype almost before it happened. It wasn't the tech but the whole utopianism that was tiresome. Technoids in fantasy land. Ugh.

I couldn't afford SF and liked Oakland a lot more, especially Chinatown and the area around the lake, and the swap meets, and the tiny computer stores. The Black culture, southern culture, Black Muslims, all that was new to me. The crime, not so cool, but whatever. SF had hella crime too.

I guess my old San Francisco and old Oakland are no more.