HN user
I work from home, live in SF, travel often, and make more here than anywhere else and put more away even with insane prices. But I also sell software development services, so not really a better place to be.
Even if I didn't, I would never leave because of the weather and activities.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ to each their own.
There's no innate human right to freedom of movement within other societies.
Humans are individuals, individuals form into groups, and those groups when large and cohesive enough form into societies, civilizations, and now nation states. If those groups are to exist as a "group" they require these shared norms, values, culture to remain a viable group. If part of that culture is to exclude outsiders on the area of land on this earth that they control, then who is one individual or many individuals to say that this is invalid?
This presents a lot of opportunity for places like the United States where immigration and freedom of movement is more accepted - so you get more immigration and more growth. But that is something citizens of the US have decided, not external actors.
I didn't say only admit people that are already running large companies, though those are welcome as well.
I said "on the path to 100m in 5 years"
That could be $0 through year 1-3, but it would be wholly different if that company was a technology startup creating value vs a services business like a non-chain Mexican restaurant mentioned below that is not necessarily creating an outsized impact on the US economy with low wage service jobs.
Apple was incorporated and immediately had $250,000 in capital invested. Me thinks you did not read the wiki page.
During the first five years of operations revenues grew exponentially, doubling about every four months. Between September 1977 and September 1980 yearly sales grew from $775,000 to $118m, an average annual growth rate of 533%.
I don't disagree with many of your points, but I think perhaps what is missing is perspective. Playing a bit of devil's advocate:
I think that what's lacking in the american system is the recognition of "normal" entrepreneurs, those making $200 dollars at a time, and growing their high-potential tech-product business from $0 to $1M in 5 years
This doesn't move the needle in the biggest economy in the world. That's not even a viable business in most cities with high cost of living. At that rate you probably wouldn't even be able to pay yourself a decent wage, let alone hire anyone, within the first 2-3 years. Why would the United States want to let you in where there are more promising businesses/entrepreneurs on the path to $100m/year companies within 5 years?
Should just turn on "do not disturb" and set it up to let important people's phone numbers through to you.
Or writing code for a fortune 100 company.
Or designing interfaces for some of the most iconic software and hardware companies.
Most of these centers are creating jobs - but not high paying, technical jobs. Support and cost center staffing in low cost locations relative to SV.
Carry your own food and enough batteries to last to the destination. Or have a hot swap battery bot like a military jet re-fueler. No stopping at all!
In all seriousness, I'm not saying there won't be stop offs and rest stops (because really, who wants to be in a moving box for 3 days), but in terms of feasibility I can definitely theorize a situation where stopping is no longer necessary.
I just finished a road trip and man, would an auto-RV have been amazing. Instead of only catching ~50% of the view because I was the driver, I could take it all in and interact with my lady at the same time vs focused on driving. Growing up I thought RVs were crazy awful - but now I look forward to my auto-RV at age 75 driving my old ass around the country.
What if I offered you $5,000 to fix it?
bye felicia. lower rents for all!
That's it?
Great points.
Also important to note, that Uber does a few things exceptionally well that most other "Uber for X" companies fail with at least one or more:
1) Dramatically increase convenience / quality of service
2) Lower or comparable costs to alternative (esp UberX vs Taxi and vs your own car)
3) Have a demo-able product. Viral word of mouth is so simple when you can literally take your friend for a ride.
Most other on-demand services fail at one of these. Spoon rocket in your example, first started as a more expensive convenience play, then as they tried to scale up, lowered quality (violating #1) in order to compete on price (#2). This is why I stopped using them and also why I don't use their competitors like Sprig and Munchery, just too expensive for what it is.
That Austin drop is staggering. And interesting to note that Dallas (?!) has 2x the venture investment that Austin does. Detroit had slightly more in Q1. Crazy.
In theory, this could alleviate some of the issues you are seeing in SF, but in practice this is not something many tech companies founded here would do. Most new tech companies are being started by people already working in the industry, and the industry is located in Silicon Valley, with epicenter now being in SF. So it just doesn't make sense from a competitive perspective for most companies to move out of the Bay when there's no better place for "tech".
To me, the most logical conclusion is to organize and create the political will to create the housing necessary to alleviate prices. This could be on a regional level - building more housing throughout the east bay and peninsula, or organizing on the city level to re-zone and re-develop parts of the city that can most easily support denser development.
Not everyone will like it but as long as you have more people than the anti-more-housing crowd and are organized to vote, it can be done.
Not so much the 'middle class', more like top ~15% of people.
It already is happening. So many graduates see the higher level of skill they have and the joke of a salary that adjuncts make and 'nope-ing' out into industry. Academia is going to starve itself of it's best performers by low pay and horrible standards for adjuncts and tenure track positions alike.
An assistant professor is a full time position. An adjunct is like the contractor/part time version of an assistant professor. The result is that adjuncts typically teach at multiple institutions, for example an R1 research university, plus a couple of local community colleges because 1 or 2 classes at one school is not enough to pay a livable wage.
In regards to credentials, in the US they can either have a PhD, be pursuing a PhD or have completed their Masters, but it depends on the institution's requirements to teach (and the classes they are teaching). You wouldn't have a Masters grad teaching graduate classes or an ABD teaching PhDs. Most well respected higher education institutions require a PhD to be an assistant professor (full time) but only be pursuing a PhD to be an adjunct/part time assistant professor teaching undergraduates.
That deal has been heavily touted as a terrible deal for square for years. As such was priced into the IPO price as well as the current valuation. That is basically the only bad deal you can point to that they are in.
570,000 paying customers.
What made you decide to purchase YouTube Red? How much YouTube content do you watch?
Right - he makes that point in the article that it went well with the Germans and Irish, but it doesn't mean it would go well with mass immigration from China, India, or the Middle East.
Impossible to prove without doing it, but valid point that should be considered.
Trying to compete with that $5 Raspberry Pi
Smart read with some perspective on immigration from a scientist studying historical migration and immigration to the United States.
Couple of take aways:
"The United States has experienced much higher immigration rates than at present alongside much larger foreign-born populations, and we not only survived, but thrived."
BUT
"...if we returned to our noble American tradition of openness like in the 1850s and welcome in 8 million immigrants a year (same rate as 1850 as % of population), the truth is, large swathes of the United States actually would be “speaking Arabic” (or Chinese or Indian languages). Just like large groups in the US in 1850 were speaking German and Gaelic. This isn’t speculative fear-mongering, this is just a sober reading of the data."
Nope
"...the company had bookings of $2.2 billion, double the level one year ago. The company also generated $340 million in revenue in the third quarter, according to the Journal.
The home rental company last raised money in April 2014 at a $10 billion valuation. This round makes it the third-highest valued startup out there, after Uber and Xiaomi."
These guys are just quietly moving forward (for the most part) and crushing it. Nicely done.
Troll of the Week Award: Donald Trump.
Side effect of this is that Mailbox was the first to support out of the box notifications on my Apple Watch + gmail accounts. Apple mail doesn't monitor/push emails from Gmail so you don't get notified on the watch.
Would be great if they Dropbox opensourced Mailbox's codebase. I don't want to have to go back to apple mail...