Pinned ppl in sf are now nicknaming Hayes Valley "Cerebral Valley" because all the AI communities and hacker houses are there AI seems to be the one thing in startup world that demands in-person rn so much so that if you're not in sf, you're at a disadvantage
OH in sf "he's super smart. he works at openai." "he's an engineer there though, not a researcher"
sf is back… and I can’t tell if I love it here or hate it anymore
a sentiment permeating some circles of ambitious young types in sf: the next five years are incredibly important to get right as it might be one of the last opportunities to grab significant capital (a la gold rush) with software
in 2023, why is there still no perfect city to live in for ambitious ppl who want safety, nature, access to the best in retail + entertainment, intellectual curiosity?
tech bros like the roman empire because they think they're building the modern day version of it via their b2b saas companies
if you're young, one of the worst things you can do is work for someone who doesn't have a burning desire to be the best at what they do
one of the highest leverage things you can do is help someone with lots of potential early on in their career
if you needed another reminder that we live in a bubble in sf
five years ago, the company that most stanford cs new grads wanted to join was meta and the most "prestigious" role was the google apm program. a recent stanford grad told me it's now openai and cursor, respectively. oh how times have changed.
no one who did the google apm program since 2008 has founded a 1B+ company, but ppl are convinced it’s good training to be a founder
it’s now easier to start a company and raise money than it is to get hired at a company. but even if you’ve raised, what most don’t fully internalize is that the hardest of all is hiring for founding engineers
