Fremont and Berkeley drive tech scene growth | Hacker News Reader

Fremont and Berkeley drive tech scene growth

siliconvalley.com

43 pointsMilnerRoute6 comments

Speaking as a long-time inhabitant of Berkeley the start-up scene here is still small potatoes compared to Silicon Valley or San Francisco. Moreover, there are a number of drawbacks to doing business in Berkeley.

* Office space is in very short supply. Office space with adequate parking is even more difficult to find. This is mostly due to restrictions on building.

* Both Berkeley and Alameda County levy taxes on the gross receipts of companies, which hits tech companies that do business on global markets. [1],[2]

* The political climate is not exactly favorable to techies. A good percentage of the population is anti-growth.

There has been a fair amount of interesting technology spawned from the Cal EE/CS department over the years. Berkeley also has convenient BART connections which make it easy to reach from many locations in the Bay Area. Still, most companies move out of town fairly quickly when they achieve any sort of size. Databricks is a recent example--they started as a spin-off from Berkeley AMPLab work but are now located on Spear in San Francisco.

I suppose over time the absurd costs of doing business in San Francisco will drive more business into the East Bay as people relocate out of the city. That said it seems premature to talk about a tech boom in Berkeley. The situation seems unlikely to change soon.

[1] http://www.acgov.org/treasurer/faqbus.htm#receipts

[2] http://www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ContentDisplay.aspx?id=4258

We went from downtown Berkeley to downtown Oakland, and when renewing our lease and deciding how to expand, decided to stay in Oakland. Great inbetween for SF + East Bay teammates, urban area, and plenty of room to expand.

Interestingly, unless you're focusing on primarily VC-funded style growth, it's easier to get spaces near BART outside of SF. We've always been within 2 blocks!

Edit: as a data point, the last ~4 Berkeley companies my colleagues started all did Berkeley->Oakland somewhere between the 3-10 person point.

I worked at Sybase starting in 1990, shortly after they moved from Berkeley to Emeryville. I don't know the full details but office space probably played a big role. At its peak Sybase was one of the largest tenants in Emeryville.

At this point I would probably go for Oakland as well, in part because of the excellent BART access.

I worked for a well-known startup in downtown Berkeley once. They talked everyday about moving to SF because of the difficulty in hiring people. Also, one employee was paying $8,000/month for a rental house downtown.

Fremont has been Indian-ized, so it's fine to live and work there if you're Indian, otherwise it's just a long commute to nowhere.

Distinctions between cities are increasingly meaningless. It's just a never ending sea of humanity and its byproducts.

I assume you're not very familiar with local politics then. A NIMBY town if there ever was one. Good luck renting out a room, yet alone starting a business.

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