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Ask HN: Moving to SF Have a couple of questions

6 points by ApolloRising ↗ HN
Hi,

I'm a product director who also does front end development. I am moving to the SF area and wanted to ask a few questions.

If you were looking to hook up with a startup and start meeting people in the community where would you live? From my research I think mountain view would be a good place to live that is not super expensive. I am working on a few of my own startup ideas and am bootstrapping it myself for the first few months. My work related stuff has already won a few awards so would love to network with any rails/django coders in the area.

Since I really don't know any of the areas in SF except from what I read online about where new startups are going. I would like to find a place that would be within easy driving distance of meetups and other social/tech functions.

I know this is not a normal HN type question, but I think perhaps it could be of use to others that are coming to the area and need a bit of info to make the jump. (I know it would be at least useful to me)

Thanks for your help in advance.

9 comments

[ 6.1 ms ] story [ 39.4 ms ] thread
wavesplash
Welcome. Most of the event activity is based in SF. There are fewer events on the peninsula. Mtn. View is kind of boring by itself (not much to do after 10pm even on the weekends) and the social scene is based around established friends networks, dinners, and movies. SF has a mix of real startup folks and some 'tech hipsters' (tech folk trying desperately to think they're no longer the high-school geeks they really are). You'll find it easier to network and attend events in SF.

So, try landing in SF first. When you're actually ready to start something, I might suggest revisiting the south bay. The lack of social events is actually a huge plus for getting work done. Plus the engineers you find in the south bay tend to love their work more (not as interested in the 6pm happy hr).

Feel free to ping me when you get settled in (I'll leave an email hint in my profile).

ApolloRising
Thanks appreciate the input
wavesplash
BTW, if you're far enough along with your ideas, see if you can attend Startup2Startup or STIRR's FoundersTable. Both are great ways to meet quality entrepreneurs.
newy
SF is definitely where the social scene in, through there are lots of hackathons etc in the Peninsula. Check out the Hacker Dojo in Mountain view, for example. I personally settled in San Mateo just to be in between SF and Mountain View / Palo Alto, trade-off between location, rent, quality of life, etc. Feel free to ping when you settle.
ApolloRising
Will check out hackerdojo thanks for that info
farmerwu
I live in San Francisco ("the City"), and I'm a huge fan of the place. And the previous posts are right about there be more social life, by far, in SF. But given your situation, I would think carefully about Mountain View. There's so much talent down in the valley. The city tends to be younger and more design-centric. And Mountain View or one of the towns near it is certainly far cheaper.

Also, it depends a lot on you what your start up ideas involve. I would look at the Peninsula like an OSI 7-layer stack. San Jose and the South Bay are the lower layers, and then as you move north, you work your way into the higher layers. There is a definite clustering of expertise anchored by a a few big companies in each area. Core networking and silicon bending are done in San Jose by Intel, AMAT, Nat Semi., Layer 2-3 are down close by with Cisco. Mtn. View, Palo Alto, and San have some great middleware and web software - Google, Yahoo, Oracle. Then SF is a lot of UI and Application layer work. To be fair, the city is attracting a whole new wave of start-ups. And my OSI model has all kinds of glitches (like Apple being so far south). but I still think its a good guide line. If you're doing something similar to what Google does, it might make sense to be physically close to them. And I'll say it again, the South Bay is much cheaper.

ApolloRising
Hi thanks for this post. My main goal is to either start or join a small startup looking to solve an interesting problem (I do conversion optimization and product development so something near the app layer and UI is where I know I can improve a great many websites - designing for optimal user flow, creating an entire site around converting a user into registering, decreasing bounce rates, that is what I do very well with the analytics that go with it)

If you know any company looking for a product director would love to talk to them.

But back to the location thing, I will take a look at the city as well, it certainly is a bit pricey but I will know more after I visit in the next few weeks to look at a few neighborhoods.

You guys have really been great answering all the questions and making me feel welcome so thanks for that and hope to meet you all when I settle in.

If you need help with your startup to get people to convert and want to bounce ideas off me, my email is in the profile and would be happy to speak to you all about it.