There is a lot of criticism about SF not supporting tech, but it ignores the fact that tech in SF is a fairly recent thing.

When I moved to the bay area in 2004, there was no tech in SF. Silicon Valley was still the valley around San Jose and the peninsula.

1/

It was considered a bad move to start a company in SF because all of the talent lived down south. When @FlurryMobile was founded in 2005 in SF, we were one of only a dozen or two.

We had startup founder meetups that peaked at 20 people as no one wanted to make the trip.

2/

What startups there were in the city were all HQ'd around South Park because, ironically, it was some of the cheapest office space in the city. At the time everything was centered on the Financial District.

The first Flurry office was at 2nd and Bryant and it was CHEAP.

3/

(Picking up this thread)

This all changed when Mayor Ed Lee had a push to bring tech to SF. Twitter was given a big tax break in 2011 to stay in SF. Google (and soon Facebook) started running buses so young workers could live in SF and work in MV/PA. That was all after 2010

4/

The bus rides were long and hated. So those same companies opened offices in SF. Startups opened offices in SF and native SF companies like Salesforce bought buildings. Pretty soon all the talent was in SF (not down south) and this was all after 2013.

5/

Then the VCs moved into SF because the talent and startups were there. South Park became the favored home for VCs and as a result the office prices skyrocketed. South Park became the most expensive office real estate in the country.

Again, not long after it had been cheap.

6/

All of that happened in the past 5 years.

So, SF isn't turning on tech which it long embraced. It courted tech and got more than it expected in the recent past. The NIMBY nature of SF has always been there, but it was exacerbated by this amount of cash and change.

7/

This can, of course, happen anywhere. Few cities are prepared for the rapid expansion of people and capital SF saw, although many would deal with it much better than SF.

8/

At the same time, the original drivers of tech in the bay area (Stanford, UC Berkeley, VC firms) are still there. Silicon Valley also has something other cities lack: technology is the primary business. If you've lived and worked in other places you know what I mean.

In short, I'm optimistic about the future of the bay area and the tech industry there even if the short term prospects for SF are not good.

But my main point is that the narrative around tech and SF is lacking some important historical context. Hopefully that changes.