Cost of Living

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=53327

by jdavid • 19 years ago

13 52 19 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

My is gearing up to submit to the ycombinator winter round, and we are having a small amount of trouble to see how to fit 4 months into 5000 per person? Especially when 2 of the guys are married.

this is the budget i have for the south bay area:

 housing         600	
 internet         50	
 electricity     100	
 food           1050	35$ per day
 water            40	
 entertainment   100	

 cost            1940

how much should we budget per person? right now we have 2 single guys on the team, and 2 newly married guys, that would either want to bring their wives with, or they would need to visit often.

any advice would be great to see how this would work, but right now it seems like we would need money just to win ycombinator, which for those of us in Milwaukee, the VCs/ Angels alone might be worth it.

falsestprophet• 19 years ago

The womenfolk can work too.

anamax5• 19 years ago

The food is high and the housing sounds low.

Have you checked housing advertisements?

JeffL2• 19 years ago

600 a month rent is what I'm paying, splitting a large rental house with 3 other people in Santa Clara, so definitely doable.

I agree that the food is really high. If you are really trying, the one time cost of a rice cooker and a 10 lb bag of Basmati rice from Costco will go a long way, as will bag lunches instead of going out. If you try, food can really cost very little.

jdavid8• 19 years ago

i have found more opportunity working in a cafe, and going out, than i have by working in an enclosed space. I figure

2-3$ for breakfast (egg, cereal, organic milk) lunch will cost (12$) at any reasonable panera, etc... and if i get something else cheap for the day, that means another day i can invite someone to lunch for a networking opportunity. that leaves me with ($10-$20) for dinner. eating just noodles does not work for me, i need to get some sort of carnivorous delight for a meal at least once a day, fish is like 6$ a pound and then you have veggies on top of that if you cook at home, or a sushi tray is like 8$-12$ for a small one.

At 28, I can not live like a freshman college student any more. I just can't think on 1800 calories of carbs. I need a more well balanced diet.

Am i wack for thinking this? I know the average age of YC is 25, and on our team we are all 27/28, with a few younger and a few older helping on the side lines.

johnrob• 19 years ago

I say worry about that if and when you get accepted.

spoonyg• 19 years ago

I live in the Bay Area, and those #'s look pretty close to me for a minimum, penny-pinching baseline. When it comes down to it, you can almost forget about the money ycomb is offering. The money is NOTHING. It is all about the contacts and guidance, which is priceless.

tirrellp• 19 years ago

I agree with that sentiment. I am married, and I have a child. My wife and child will not be coming with me to the Bay area if I am accepted. I will be living in a cardboard box and eating ramen in the Valley, but the necessary financial arrangements have been made to ensure that my son will continue his current (private) school, the bills will be paid at home, and life will continue more or less as normal for the 3+ months I am away.

It comes down to how badly you want the experience. Look at it this way: Grad school at Stanford is ~40k/year, not including living expenses. Making whatever sacrifices necessary to experience ycombinator should be significantly less, but the experience and contacts most likely will dwarf what you are most likely to gain from a top tier graduate program in Engineering. Is it worth the investment? I can't speak for anyone but myself when I say "Absolutely."

DanielBMarkham6• 19 years ago

Living expenses are the reason I'm not applying. Unless you somehow lose intelligence and execution ability when you get married and have kids, the structure doesn't make sense to me. It seems to be geared towards single, foot-loose folks. As somebody who's put long hours in on multiple technology projects, I don't feel that having a higher overhead translates to being a worse risk. After all, what are we talking about here? The difference between 5 and 10K, or something like that? Being hungry is great. Having your wife call you every day to tell you the house is getting repossessed is counter-productive.

I agree that the knowledge and contacts are what you guys should be going for. Running on savings and forgetting about the money is the only strategy I can figure that works for us "high maintenance" entrepreneurs. If I apply, I'll just make sure I have money in savings to run for six months or so first.

comatose_kid2• 19 years ago

If you think risking the delta between what YC offers vs. living expenses for a few months is worth not applying, you might (as a potential founder) want to reconsider your appetite for risk.

jpalacio4862• 19 years ago

Amen to that.

jamiequint2• 19 years ago

> Unless you somehow lose intelligence and execution ability when you get married and have kids, the structure doesn't make sense to me.

You lose a lot of time, time that would otherwise be spent working on your startup. Time that is important when you are trying to cram as much as possible into a 10 week timeframe.

DanielBMarkham6• 19 years ago

Come on, guys. These replies are just pot shots. Take the snarkiness somewhere else.

I've worked 3-6 month projects where every minute was slinging code. And I regularly put my house and family on the line for my business.

I already have a business. I show companies how to run technology teams. I'm just looking to move into startup country because I like that environment more than the suit and tie world. I've led 5-person startup teams, and I've led 40-person rearchitecture groups. I like the startup teams a lot better.

sbraford3• 19 years ago

There's snarkiness and then there's honest to goodness questions about whether one can afford to get into Y Combinator. (if you can get that far, of course)

I personally would need to save up for a while & pay down some debt before even trying to apply. But I would never knock the idea of cutting ramen-noodle checks to YC founders. It's at the very least much better (for the probably outcome of the business) than cutting filet-mignon checks.

rrival2• 19 years ago

"I'll keep it short and sweet -- Family. Religion. Friendship. These are the three demons you must slay if you wish to succeed in business." - Mr. Burns

mynameishere2• 19 years ago

"Misquoting Mr Burns...that's a paddling."

rrival2• 19 years ago

http://tinyurl.com/3ex4y8 ? =(

imsteve• 19 years ago

wives...(!)

jey• 19 years ago

Entertainment should come out of your own pockets. We just paid for food and housing out of our YC funds, in addition to miscellaneous expenses for incorporation and etc.

skell• 19 years ago

Depending on your age and current lifestyle, saving up beforehand makes a world of difference. I currently own a house and have a very comfortable job (which I would have to leave). Fortunately, I have saved up for the obligatory 6 month emergency fund, which I may dip into if my team is accepted into the program.

If you have decent savings, then great. Planning is always key, but taking risks are where people make themselves in life...

anamax5• 19 years ago

> Unless you somehow lose intelligence and execution ability when you get married and have kids, the structure doesn't make sense to me. It seems to be geared towards single, foot-loose folks. As somebody who's put long hours in on multiple technology projects, I don't feel that having a higher overhead translates to being a worse risk.

Higher overhead may not make someone a worse risk, but it does make them more expensive. That has consequences.

Is your participation worth twice as much as that of someone with half the overhead? If not, why should YC pay for your overhead?

As someone once said, "The universe is not here to please you."

DanielBMarkham6• 19 years ago

Ouch.

No it's not. But neither am I here to please the universe.

I'm just saying that it's not a lot of money. Perhaps it is to you. I can make that money as pocket change in a very short amount of time in my normal consulting business. If YC wants to pay 10 bucks for their team members, more power to them. Not my call. They've got their math to do and I've got mine. Even families have profit/loss statements and break-even points. Their rates have consequences. After all the universe is not here to please them either, right?

sbraford3• 19 years ago

The solution seems pretty simple then.

Apply to YC and let's hypothetically assume you get in.

Spend 20% of your time making this ridiculous amount of money you can make doing consulting, the rest on your startup.

Problem solved. =) In all seriousness though, didn't Xobni have to do something like this for a while? (side consulting)

anamax5• 19 years ago

The universe isn't complaining....

Whether or not it is a "lot of money" is irrelevant. The relevant question is "Is it enough to meet YC's goals?" Maybe Markham's non-participation gnaws at PG, but I'm guessing that it doesn't.

BTW - The vast majority of YC particpants are foregoing significant income and the lifestyle that goes with it, a lifestyle not unlike Markham's. Why is only the latter worthy of consideration?

However, we have established that Markham can easily self-fund at the level that he requested from YC. I look forward to seeing the result.

comatose_kid2• 19 years ago

As a married person who applied to ycombinator (and didn't get selected):

You are totally focusing on the wrong things - think about the application, your product, and your team (not in that order actually). Worry about the other stuff once you get in.

- Visiting/bringing wives is nice, but keep in mind that apart from the expense, your cofounders won't really be seeing them all that much.

-Make sure all or a majority of your founders can move. If they can't you've just given YC an easy way to move on to the next application..

jdavid8• 19 years ago

We are discussing it tonight, and for those people out there with out 1 year leases, I just do not know how you wing it so much.

Right now I am on a 3 month notice monthly lease, and I have a roommate that is planing on leaving in the spring. I have verbally committed to him to stay till march, it would be really sh*tty of me to leave him early and to also not give my landlord proper notice, especially since we work in a professional environment together.

So if i am going to be decent and honest, i will need to support my $800 Milwaukee, habit until march just to keep the peace.

Of course, it might be that the only way to win, is to just think of yourself. I would rather not live in such a world, and so often times I am willing to support the consequences of being decent to people and friends. It has tended to pay off for me in the long run.

Xichekolas• 19 years ago

Mainly your food seems extremely high. If you don't mind the tasty Lipton noodles ($1), Shells and Cheese ($1.50), Frozen Pizza ($2), Hot pockets ($3 for 2), Spaghetti (~$2), Canned soup ($1-2), Cereal ($0.25)... you can eat a lot of cheap meals. I don't see why it should be hard for someone to eat nicely at $300/mo.

For instance, last night I ate a chicken breast ($1), mashed potatoes (instant kind - $2), and green beans (can - $1.50), with a can of Coke ($0.25)... a decent meal for $4.75.

jamiequint2• 19 years ago

$35/day for food is insane. You can eat really really well for less than half of that (if you are willing to cook).

jonathan• 19 years ago

$100 for entertainment is way too much ... YC's no fun ...

aarontait• 19 years ago

Learn to love Mr. Noddle.

menloparkbum• 19 years ago

your food budget is 2x what I would consider normal, your housing budget is about 1/2 what I would consider normal.

However, about $2K a month is pretty close to average living expenses, no matter where you cut back.

here is my breakdown

housing: 1100

internet: 0 (upstairs neighbors let me leech, coffee shops)

electricity: 0 (covered in rent)

food: 300 (burritos, cook at home, burger/pizza on weekends)

water: 0 (included in rent)

entertainment: 100 (beer)

gym: 60

cost: 1560

if you live in the south bay, you forgot car, car insurance, parking and/or caltrain.

jdavid8• 19 years ago

thanks for the info, great response

jdavid8• 19 years ago

ok, for now, it seems like the same debates that always rage when making a budget. you can either be honest with your self and try to spend less, or you can lie to yourself and not have enough.

I am strongly in the camp of planning for the reality of the situation. when it comes to entertainment, its less than 5% of the budget, i think this seems fair. That is 2 dates at the movies, 2 nights of drinks, or one SCCA race a month.

as for food, i might be able to get by on ramen, but i might also miss out on other opportunities if i was out and about.

also, unlike many of the teams applying we nearly have a product ready to role now, for us this is all about the networking and so our strategy is quite a bit different than the make it go strategy, for us this is about a life style shift, its about committing to the start up and if that means moving to silicon valley, this might be the kick in the pants to do it. From my stand point that means that the wives will most likely move too. They may not move at first, but i suspect they will want to move out there.

If you want to see a demo of our app in adobe air. you can find it at: http://s3.derby.adobe.socialhelix.net/zcalendar.air

Our goal is to start serving two customers by jan'08, which would be before we leave, and have a revenue potential of $1,000 - $20,000 a year depending on how well our app works.

You can see an early demo we did for one of our customers last year at http://info.socialhelix.com

Our biggest fear is how do we scale our application, do we have all of the kinks worked out, will the security model of the web keep shifting, etc...... How can we do this full time?

Just recently some of our team finished paying off their weddings and cars. I am just trying to figure out what it will cost us to go out there so we can make a decision on what our next move is.

jpalacio4862• 19 years ago

I'm glad im not married, have no kids, and can manage to survive on the minimum if I must. That said, a lot of people out there aren't so lucky, but ultimately it comes down to what you really want. If you want to continue working for a useless paycheck while the job requirements go up, then dont apply. If you would like to risk it all for the slim possibility that your idea/product might succeed, then by all means go for it. YC here I come!

rickcecil• 19 years ago

Of course, there's always the path to starting up without going to YC. You just might not be a good match for YC. Doesn't mean that you can't be successful, it just means you're going to have to find alternative routes to success.

ratsbane2• 19 years ago

PG, have you thought of buying or leasing an entire apartment or condo complex and putting YC founders up in that? Besides economies of scale there would be efficiencies in putting together people with common goals.

There's a reason so many startups form in grad student housing.

pg• 19 years ago

Actually our plan is the opposite. To run YC with just 4 people we try to outsource everything. We don't even own our own servers. We'd never want to own apartment buildings.

The reason startups form in grad student housing is the grad students, not the housing.

ratsbane2• 19 years ago

The YC way seems to be working rather well.

I think grad student housing does help focus. You can get meal plan and not have to spend time going to the grocery store so much; you tend to interact much more with other people who are also focused on similar problems and random friends don't drop by and try to drag you off on some irrelevant adventure.

I have a problem with that sort of thing. I have to be a bit brutal when I'm really deep in something. The keeping-in-your-head essay really hit the nail for me.

jdavid8• 18 years ago

So I thought I would update this post.

I am now living in the bay area and here are some hard numbers

our 3brdm is $3350 a month, and it fits 4 people snug but comfortably. So that is about $1200 a bedroom.

Internet is included, but you might expect to pay a bit more than $50 a month.

food well, eating at Mel's Dinner will run you $12 for a meal, and about $2.50 for a drink, and another $2 for tip, or about $17 for a dinner meal. Milk is between $4-$8 a gallon, and ground beef is $3 a pound. Cereal is about the same cost, and Starbuck's Coffee, is the same price in SF as it is in MKE or Chicago. Bagels at Noah's will run you about $2.50 for a bagel with cream cheese, and lunch will run about $8 a person without getting a drink.

You will be using a laundry mat, and it will cost you $2 a load to wash, and $1-$2 to dry them, so $3-4 in total at the brainwash laundry mat.

Beer is about $5-$6 in most of SF, but last night I was in the mission drinking micro brews for $3-4 a beer. On another occasion in north beach I paid $11 for a beer in a plastic cup.

The AMC theater on VanNess is $10.50 a person and matinées are $8.50 a person.

The bus will take you anywhere for $1.50 a trip, with a transfer that is good for ~2 hours+ depending on how the driver tears the transfer ticket. The BART is about $5 to Berkley, or SFO and a bit more if you want to go to Freemont or to Palo Alto, etc.. CalTrain is a bit more expensive and runs about $10 for a trip between Sunnyvale and like SF. Taking a cab between the Mission and say "the Richmond" will run about $10-20, and where I live its about $10.

Oh, parking is a bitch. Expect to pay $200-$400 a month more for rent or a separate parking space.

Living in SF you will also save money for heating and cooling costs, because the weather is so temperate.

There are at least 5-10 tech events a week, so you will have to choose wisely which ones you are going to go to and during the week its not pleasant getting between Sunnyvale, Palo Alto, and Mountain View and SF proper.

Living in the Mission is probably the cheapest and has the best transportation options for a tech entrepreneur, but pacific/laurel heights and the richmond have their advantages too. potrero hill is a great area but pricier than others.

if you are going to try to save on rent by being a bit farther out in the city, make sure you are near a bus line that runs regularly, at night many of the buses really reduce their schedule, but for example lines like the 38 will run fairly late with 7 min intervals, and then 20 min in the late night.

Cost of Living

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