Everybody says that the big draw to San Francisco
is the weather. True, it can be pretty nice at
times. But it can also be pretty miserable.
I tuned out a bit after reading this. San Francisco has terrible weather compared to Silicon Valley, and someone who doesn't know the distinction between the two cannot, in my opinion, be taken seriously when sounding the death knell of the entire region.
Paul Graham said it best, “Silicon Valley is
soul-crushing suburban sprawl.”
I lived in Silicon Valley for 7 years and didn't find it to be particularly soul-crushing. It's a nice place to spend some time. It's a very nice place to raise a family, if you have one (I don't).
It's great that startups are springing up all over the world, but that doesn't mean Silicon Valley is dead. Silicon Valley doesn't have to lose for others to succeed.
oh, yeah. Well I live currently in Mountain View, and I find one of the most boring places in earth (SunnyVale and Cupertino are worse), if you are a single guy.
Just saying. The 20s are ment to have fun, get laid, drink booze, write some code, then go out again. You wont be 20some again, it is a once in a lifetime opportunity to enjoy life (and start something at the same time).
In here you are forced to live a suburbian boring life, even though you don't have kids.
If you are married and have kids, you probably don't have any time anyway, so boring is ok.
Everytime I go to work, I always think: Sigh, this place has such a great weather, but unfortunately it is wasted with this boring sprawling burbs.
"Just saying. The 20s are ment to have fun, get laid, drink booze, write some code, then go out again. You wont be 20some again, it is a once in a lifetime opportunity to enjoy life (and start something at the same time)."
And for those of us that have no interest in several of these things that are allegedly essential to "enjoying life" in one's 20s?
It is what you make it. I know plenty of people in the area who seem to have a good amount of fun. But it's always possible to go live in the city if you find the hard life too difficult to find in the valley.
But an attitude that dwells on thoughts like ". . . but unfortunately it is wasted with this boring sprawling burbs" could probably suck the life right out of almost any experience.
Re: Weather
Redwood City, Heart of the valley - perhaps the best weather in California. I've gone a couple years without ever feeling the need to turn on a heater or an air-conditioner (not that anyone owns one of those in RWC). On the flip side, I've almost been chilled to the point of hypothermia just 50 minutes north in the City, on what was supposed to be a sunny _summer_ afternoon.
It's true - the Bay Area has (extreme) micro-climates. If you don't like Hot or Cold, then move to a micro-climate that has (relatively) few of those days.
Re: Silicon Valley - Perhaps I'm biased because I moved from Vancouver, which has no end of interesting neighborhoods, city blocks, and views - but I do find most of South-San-Francisco all the way down to San Jose to be pretty uninspiring. I've been here for 14 years, and it is depressingly sprawlesque.
With all that said, it has the greatest density of _interesting_ hi-tech jobs in the world, with pretty awesome challenges, and in a safe, clean, well serviced lifestyle if you choose to live on the right side of the right community.
That said, I've lived up and down the West Coast and Southern California's weather beats anywhere else, hands down. But I suppose weather quality is subjective. I'm willing to put up with a few hot weeks and a few rainy weeks a year for nearly perfect weather 3/4 of the year.
I grew up in Belmont (borders RWC and has an awful micro climate in the hills) and went to college in Santa Barbara. Santa Barbara's weather is even better than RWC. I suppose the city fathers never felt the need to advertise it.
Merits of the article aside, I'll have to agree with this. Hopefully not offending anyone here, but I often find myself driving down 101 and looking at lifeless office complexes with little to no charm. Yes, the weather is great, but this area is too spread out. There's also very little here as far as places to walk around, not much to do at night if you're past the drinking stage...
Have you ever seen Hong Kong? or even New York? We'll never have that here because people value suburbia. Does this mean that all the talented minds here also enjoy suburbia, or that they're only here because of amazing opportunities that brought them in, and loathe suburbia as much as I do?
Having lived in the bay area (both in sunny suburbia and shady SOMA) for many years, I really appreciate living now in an Asian city with safe streets, excellent public transit, busy nightlife, and a 7-11 or Familymart on every block.
So you thought the central argument was about the weather? Really? It does seem that a lot of people agreed with you. Getting a geographic breakdown by voter/region would be fascinating.
Anyway I think we all now know that (for better or worse) the term 'Dead' in this context means something like 'predicted by the author to diminish in dominance' as in PG's 'Microsoft is Dead'.
Except if that was true, in the sense that PG used in that essay, we wouldn't be talking about Silicon Valley at all.
Instead, it's absolutely central to all of these discussions, they're all about how area X is a, the, or a potential new Silicon Valley or how the latter is potentially losing its dominance.
It's not simply irrelevant like Microsoft, a company you no longer measure yourself against (except on gross financial terms, e.g. Apple), worry will destroy you, etc. In this space of web based startups, the only worries about Microsoft are WRT accommodating their browsers.
The way this article is written makes it sound like the author has recently bought into the Dave McClure pyramid scheme and he's supposed to tell 10 friends about the new, awesome system Dave has come up with.
Disclaimer: I'm not from the Valley and I haven't ever heard of Dave McClure. He may very well be a reputable fellow in the angel investing world.
This is just a horrible article where the author has no first hand clue of what he's talking about.
other startup communities can still thrive without the valley dying. If anything that means the valley has succeeded. I want to see the essence of the valley spread elsewhere.
So is there any way to prove that the valley is INDEPENDENTLY dying? Nope, because it's not.
I can't figure out if this guy is an ignorant clown, a troll, or both. Ridiculous arguments, like the one where he says startups don't get any special advantage from the weather. Just because you're slaving away in a cubicle, doesn't mean your family won't enjoy the weather... and the great traffic on gorgeous highway 280... and the low crime rate... and the great schools... and Fry's... and San Francisco... etc., etc.
I always heard that one of the great advantages of the weather is that when you exit your cubicle it's likely to be good (see rmundo's comment), which is something I can assure you is not true of Boston (year around, at least).
In many parts of the country you have to plan your activities around the weather, at least for parts of the year; I gather that's so much the case for Silicon Valley.
"The reality is that the weather makes no f-cking difference if you are slaving away 26 hours per day on your startup;"
No, no, no, no. Good weather days should to be common enough that I won't feel deprived if I'm slaving in my office all day; it will be ready for me when I'm ready to take a break.
It's funny, you read blog posts like this, and then you hear people like Richard Florida talk about how the future is concentration of knowledge, not distribution.
I don't think there is necessarily a contradiction here. The article doesn't say that knowledge is being distributed, rather that the creative entrepreneurial mindset of the Valley is being distributed. I have worked in software startups in the Valley, the UK, France, and Oregon for the past 15 years. I must say I would agree. But I think the author is exaggerating the adverse competitive effect on the Valley the emergence of new tech centers is having. I would like to see him give us some real evidence that the Valey is suffering from it. I doubt it is just yet. There is plenty of growth potential to go around for now...
One of the points of the article was that entrepreneurs don't need VC since it's become so much cheaper to do startups. Thus Sand Hill Road isn't as important as it was.
Unfortunately, this is only true if you rather narrowly limit the domain(s) of startups.
I'm hope we haven't seen the end of e.g. neat foundational hardware tricks. Where's the next thing like the FPGA going to come from in a VC free world? (Heck, how about fast FPGAs (one company that I know of is working on them with an async core).)
No he said its easier to get to market without VC it removes VC's from "early rounds". The need for VC to grow is still going to be needed for the vast majority of new businesses.
"This effectively removes VC’s from the equation at these early rounds and turns things over to angel investors"
Even then the point still stands even angel money is still easier to get in Silicon Valley.
I don't think you need Sand Hill VC if you're making a web SaaS startup. But big money is still useful and often necessary to get other types of startups off the ground or scale up, in areas like green tech, transportation, biomed, etc. For these, it prob still helps to be near high concentrations of VC. For a web SaaS, sure you can be in the middle of Idaho or Kansas.
All these "is Foo dead?" kind of topics are made to draw more attention than the usual, even though they don't make sense or matter much in the context of _now_
No. First of all, a lot of startups still need to raise money. It may be cheaper now than in 1998 but it's still not cheap to pay 2-6 people for 6-24 months. And getting users and customers does not necessarily equal profitability.
What has actually happened in that there is a mismatch between investors and VC. In '98, many investors were MBAs who were willing to take VC investment on so-so terms because they wanted to eventually become VCs and they valued the connections. In '10, they want to take a lot less money (because they need less) on much better terms, and VC still hasn't adapted to that change.
But I cannot understate the value of having seasoned, risk-accepting, wanting-to-change-the-world investors and entrepreneurs. Silicon Valley has a singular advantage in this regard.
It's great that startups are springing up all over the world, but that doesn't mean Silicon Valley is dead. Silicon Valley doesn't have to lose for others to succeed.