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Writing this on the plane back from a week in SF, and figured it’s long overdue that I write my first proper blog post of the year. Being back in the Bay area is always extremely refreshing, and I always leave with lots of new thoughts as well as higher ambitions. The bullets are sort of random, and not very related. All three could probably be a post of its own, but I’ll leave that for another time.
1. If SF is an indication of where the world is headed, I’m not overwhelmingly positive:
There’s all this talk about solving big problems, still many of the companies receiving the greatest piles of funding are working on increasing the convenience of very well-of people (eg. Uber, Doordash). At the same time, the city is flooded of people with really big problems: homeless people on almost every street corner. And I don’t see entrepreneurs running after these problems. Capitalism offers a very simple explanation as to why this is, but it’d be encouraging if more smart people spent their energy solving such problems. (Steve Schlafman of RRE wrote a good post on this and how VCs are deciding what get’s built. Really inspiring and thought-provoking, thanks to Johan for sharing this last week)
2. It is often argued that Uber/Lyft will reduce the amount of cars in big cities – this appears to not be true:
And the reason for this is that the Pool/Line options are so inexpensive they become a realistic alternative to public transport. One bus ticket in SF is $2.50, and a trip with Uber Pool is less than $4.75. And while the bus stops 50 times (perhaps you even have to change bus) on it’s way to your destination, Uber Pool gets you much faster from door-to-door (no need to walk to the bus stop) with at most a few stops on the way. I’d rather use Uber Pool, and so are most San Franciscans. And I don’t see Uber/Lyft outcompeting public transport as a good thing.
3. Talent is global, opportunity is not:
I’ve known this for a while, but it’s always good to be reminded. This past week I got to spend time with many of the Norwegian entrepreneurs located in the Bay area, and the opportunities they get through being where they are are second to none. Especially fascinating to hear the experiences of the two Norwegian companies who graduated YC this week. I still strongly believe it’s possible to build great tech companies out of the Nordics, but a presence in SF/SV is most definitely necessary if you want to play in the Big leagues. Keep product/engineering in the Nordics, but have parts of your management in the Valley/SF (like Spotify, Vivino, Realm etc are doing successfully).
Would of course love to hear comments if you have any 🙂