[brandur]

There's a little bit of editorializing in the title, but Garry's basic contention is that YC is firing on all cylinders, and it's headquartered in SF:

> Jamali: It’s kind of interesting — so that narrative is there, but are you saying at the same time that there is this comeback happening, that maybe a lot of people outside of San Francisco haven’t appreciated? A comeback that’s being driven by the tech industry?

> Tan: Yeah, at the end of the day, what we want is prosperity. And the coolest thing in the world is that at Y Combinator, we get to see two or three people come together from any background, from any country in the world, and they have a fair shot here. They get half a million dollars, and they can go and try to create something that touches a billion people. And that’s really what we try to do every day. And if they succeed, they’ll have thousands of employees, and these are good, high-paying jobs in tech. And that will actually create so much prosperity for the whole community, that that’s actually why San Francisco is so awesome.

Not so much in the interview, but a common claim is that many of the most important AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic are located in the city, so there's a bit of an AI boom going on.

For general context though, Garry's part of the crowd that's committed to staying in San Francisco and getting involved in local politics to make the city better. Whether or not you agree, he's definitely going to have an intentional pro-SF bias in general, which he'd acknowledge.

[7e]

You can get way more than half a million dollars per year making something that touches half a million people by working at a FAANG. In the end you're likely to be much wealthier by working there than at a failing startup. It's pretty exploitive of YC to pimp the startup so hard; the only one making money consistently with that lottery ticket approach is them.

[RC_ITR]

>but a common claim is that many of the most important AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic are located in the city, so there's a bit of an AI boom going on.

I think the stronger claim as to why SF is the hub is: where else is the center if not there?

Seattle/NY/Boston/Austin/LA/Miami has some activity (probably in roughly that order), but hard to really call them the center of anything.

[chasd00]

Covid showed that no physical center is the best physical center. With wfh finally taking hold the center is everywhere and nowhere.