Some thoughts I jotted down after living in SF for a year.
read moreIt's not really what I expected, at least who I'm around.
Basically, the people who are out here are often too caught up in startup theatre. It's not like Paul Graham described when he was in Cambridge, just doing everything to save money and working in a tiny apartment and trying to get things done.
One good thing is the public open spaces, we wouldn't really get that elsewhere. That's been a huge benefit. But could probably do coffee shops in other cities.
The fires really can be bad. The smoke gives me headaches, and it lasts for weeks. It's just not good to live in.
There is so little diversity in this city. Basically it's only white and Asian people, and the attitude toward homeless people is pretty bad as well.
Examples:
- [redacted] and company. They didn't have revenue, or any real near hope for revenue. They were just out here to be here, and ended up moving back. They were running off of funding the entire time, and were chasing a pipe dream for making money.
- [redacted] unfortunately wants to have a start-up, but doesn't seem very committed. He still puts his main work first, and only talks about making strides. Even when working with him, he would take a day to respond, not 10 minutes, which was holding me back. There just wasn't enough hustle and he doesn't seem to want enough to get things to an actually working state.
- [redacted] lives out here, and while he's a nice and great guy, his company cares more about making a beautiful and Apple-like app than making something actually useful. They redesign everything all the time, but don't actually make real progress.
- [redacted] is also a nice guy. He's not in the start-up world, but thinking back to the Google glass days, isn't exactly a "lets get it done" guy, more just a manager guy.
- [redacted] is better, he has some hustle it seems, but is caught up in the fanfare of self driving cars. He's definitely not that bad.
Maybe this is just representative of most of start-up people anywhere, but it at least doesn't seem to have much special going for it.