Moving Back to SF
Am I a contrarian now?!!!
Before getting into the meat of the post, I wanted to say a huge congrats to my friends Will Laufer (who has been featured on Snack Bites before here) and Alex Soto on the company they co-founded, Prelude being acquired by Calendly!!!
The story of Prelude is one of intense perseverance, vision, and execution. When Prelude started, there were other competitors in the space who had raised $20M+ of capital. They stayed lean for ~2 years building and selling the product just between the two of them before raising their first round of funding. They have taught me tons. I wanted to capture the full story so put together a comprehensive Twitter thread to talk about this “overnight success” and how hard startup building actually is.
On to the rest of the post, TLDR - I’m moving back to the San Francisco Bay Area.
I hate these posts proclaiming that one city in the US is the best, etc. And yet, I also need a way to tell everyone that I’m moving to the Bay Area again and this is the easiest. For those, who aren’t interested, please skip over this post and we’ll be back to more software next week :)
I grew up in New Jersey, lived in Pittsburgh for 2 years after college, moved to SF in 2013 for 6 years, moved to NYC for 1.5 years, and Santa Monica in LA for 1 year. Suffice to say, I’ve moved around the US a lot!
So when moving back to the SF Bay Area, I considered a lot of different options and was open to moving anywhere. I made the best decision I could balancing work, life, hobbies, etc.
In the end, here’s why I made the move
Outdoors: The best outdoor activities (hiking, climbing, boating, skiing, etc) near a major city in the US is in my opinion in the Bay Area. You have Yosemite, Mt Tam, Big Sur, Lake Tahoe, Big Basin Redwoods, etc. That’s not even mentioning Napa, Mendocino, Sausalito, and plenty more beautiful places for sailing, drinking wine and more.
Enterprise Software Ecosystem: There is a massive density of founders, talent, advisors, customers, partners in the enterprise software market in SF. This has major compounding benefits that are hard to kill, no matter how hard local politics may try. Given how many people have benefited from this effect in the Bay Area, the ability to grab coffee with a domain expert in the area you’re targeting or someone that has encountered the same problems as you is unmatched. Companies can/will be/are being built anywhere in the world but some of the best advice may still reside in SF.
International Appeal: At boldstart, over half of our investments are outside the US/Canada. If you talk to any of our international founders, they all mention SF being a special place where they bring the team to be energized about building great companies alongside all the other startups. I know two of our teams from France: Easop and Cycle that came to SF just last month! Also Ohad, CEO of Env0 and a few other founders yet to be announced are moving as well. Anecdotally, this happens even more so in NYC given the easier plane distance to Europe as well as time difference but SF still has a very strong showing.
Network Effects: Adobe just bought Figma for $20B!!! Guess where both are headquartered…you guessed it the Bay Area. That means more future founders, experienced employees, angel investors, and advisors are back in the ecosystem.
All that to say, no place is perfect. The politics and homelessness in SF is indeed ridiculous. I am an optimist and believe those will be improved over time. In the meantime, the network effects and energy around building in the air will continue to drive founders to live and visit especially in the enterprise ecosystem.
So for anyone visiting the Bay Area in the future, please give me a ring and I’ll see you in person!
What I’m excited about this week:
Unveiling Steadybit which makes it easy for developers to test for weak spots in their applications & infrastructure to prevent downtime!
Unveiling Tres which enables Web 3 Finance teams to gain real-time visibility into their crypto and currency flows!
For those interested in how a great investor thinks, my friend Bill Brewster did an excellent podcast with Marc Cohodes, famed short seller, about how to think about asymmetric opportunities, crypto, spotting frauds and much more
Where is Wasm in its adoption curve, how does it correct some anti-patterns in software development, and why is it useful by Chase Roberts
Excited for boldstart ventures to support startups building on Cloudflare Workers, an effort led by my friend Mia Wang!
We @Boldstartvc are excited to support startups building on @Cloudflare Workers 🎉 @liveblocks a portfolio co, currently uses Workers & Durable Objects to provide APIs to devs efficiently! We hope to find & support many more in the future Congrats @miawang__ on this launch 🚀The world’s leading venture capitalist firms commit $1.25 BILLION to back startups built on Cloudflare Workers. https://t.co/ZD0Sa0vPBA #BirthdayWeek🎂
Cloudflare @CloudflareHow to set an operating cadence for a remote first company from CEO of Mutiny and Former Head of Marketing at Gusto
I dislike the move but like this post. Does that make sense? Of course, I dislike the move for selfish reasons. We'll miss you here in LA but I'm sure we'll be seeing each other. Have fun in SF, keep it fun for us!
Congrats on the big move (back)! 💚 🥃