I had a really early morning today and woke up at around 6am, so I decided to get out early and try and find a coffee shop with wifi to get some work done. It was a pretty long day with lot’s on the schedule, so feel free to skip through this post a bit.
Housing
So far I’ve visited two amazing houses on Wednesday and Thursday and tonight I have a third viewing at another house with two guys and another girl in the heart of the Mission, which is still my favourite neighbourhood so far. There are other popular areas to live in such as Nob Hill, Pacific Heights, North Beach and the Marina, but these are a bit more fancy residential areas and mostly attract families, YUPpen and recent college graduates (specifically a lot of frat people I was told). The areas I’m looking in are more around Castro, Duboce Triangle and Mission specifically because they’re in between the beach and work.
The rent prices here are insanely high, the Internships in the Valley program estimates rent at around $800 - $1,500 per month for a room in a shared apartment, but as far as I know I haven’t met anyone that pays less than $1,200. Most advertisements on Craigslist and Facebook for a decent place are around $1,200 - $1,900 per month including utilities. I did decide to ditch Facebook in the end, so I am going to delete my account again, as Craigslist seems to be working fine.
Manny’s
In the morning we had a Q&A with Tom Medema, the founder and CEO of Bubble, followed by another Q&A with SC Moatti, the founder and managing partner of Mighty Capital and Products that Count. The discussion was mostly about entrepreneurship, how to get funding and how to develop your product, so if you’re interested in these topics feel free to read on, otherwise maybe skip to the next section.
The main takeaways I got from the meetings were:
Tom Medema
People are emotional beings and not always rational
No matter how good your idea or product is, it’s important to remember that people have emotions and don’t always make decisions based on logic.
Don’t ask friends for feedback
They gave the tip to read the Mom Test, but the gist is that friends are too nice when they give feedback.
Think about how you are perceived
Try to have friends or acquaintances introduce you to investors as a favour to the investor rather than the other way around.
It’s also good to share your backstory to build credibility, if you had to personally invest in your business rather than rely on handouts, it helps show investors how serious you are.
SC Moatti
Create your own network
I found it quite a coincidence that she said this as I happen to have unintentionally founded Librae
She emphasised how important a network is and that its the main reason fancy ivy league schools exist and keep themselves up
Don’t think in barriers
It’s all about framing and approaching challenges from a new perspective so that it works to your advantage.
For example: Creating a product that is good, fast, and cheap is usually seen as impossible because you have to pick two of the three, you can’t have all three. Her take was to rethink how you measure value for example if the product is an expensive one-time purchase such as a laptop, you could measure costs in value per hour. If you buy a really cheap computer that you never use or a really expensive computer that you always use, which one is cheaper per hour?
SOSV (Indie Bio and Hax)
Before heading to the next destination we had lunch at Super Duper Burgers (and I was telling friends that I was going to eat healthy). I was pretty happy with my cookies and cream (my fave flavour) milkshake and a really delicious veggie truffle burger (which was also insanely oily). We also briefly popped by Chinatown during our break and it really felt like China at some times.
After lunch, we headed to SOSV, another VC company but this time one that said they focus specifically on start-ups that have a technical advantage and contribute to either planetary or human health. The contract between SOSV and Craft Ventures was insane. If you would imagine a stereotypical Silicon Valley start-up, you’d probably think of something more like a playground with ping pong tables, slightly messy with boxes and paperwork all over the place, very casually dressed people and people jacked on coffee. This was that (although they’re a VC and not a start-up technically speaking).
Evening
After the SOSV visit, I had to head back to Mission for my third viewing of the week with Lucas, Himank and Casey. The house was pretty nice, the room was great with loads of light and they even have a really nice garden. We went out to a nice vegan Mexican place (Gracias Madre), with framed photos of the kitchen staff’s mothers scattered across the walls, for happy hour from 3pm to 6pm, so we had an insanely early dinner. I would really recommend the place though, it was really nice and during happy hour the prices are really affordable.
Of course, I had to have an ice-cream after dinner (cookies and cream, the one and only) before I headed off to Eric’s place by Glen Park, which felt relatively far from anything else in SF as far as I knew. It was a completely different neighbourhood from where I had been in the city, as it was a bit more Southern but also way more hilly. From there we actually had a view over the entire city, where you could see the lights of all the buildings in the distance. Pretty stunning.
The nightlife in the M A R I N A (the way one of the other Dutch interns, Gijs, has been spelling it in the group chat the last days) was not as exciting as I had hoped. Everything here closes at 2am sharp as well. So there was a lot of time pressure to head out and find something, but for some reason on this Friday evening everything was pretty quiet. It seems like it might be 6 months of low-key drinking and chilling, rather than the extravagant nights out that I’m used to in the Netherlands.