# 24 – #Exodus or #NoExodus – our most contentious episode, yet

Episode 24 ends our trilogy on Silicon Valley and our “no bs” contextualization: from its history, geography and its most common and core myths.  In this episode, we deep dive on our Silicon Valley loves (and hates) and finally address the elephant in the room: is there an exodus going on or not? Has Silicon Valley’s downfall started or is it highly exaggerated? Listen to our most contentious podcast yet. Navigation: Introduction (01:33) Section 1: Hates (02:19) Section 2: Loves (33:51) Section 3: The Future of Silicon Valley (54:41) Conclusion (1:13:09) Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Tech Entrepreneur, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, co-founder at App Annie, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro Our show:   Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Intro (01:34)Nuno: So today in episode 24 of tech deciphered, we'll be finalizing our trilogy on Silicon valley. Our non bullshit view on Silicon valley, which started in episode 22, talking about what Silicon valley is and what brought us here, then continues in episode 23, with an episode specifically on the mythology of Silicon valley and our sevent myths of Silicon valley. And today we will end with love, hate - our areas of love and our areas  of hate of Silicon valley and the bay area. And we will finalize with Silicon valley in transition. Is there an Exodus? Is this a mindset? Is this a geography? What will happen to this region? Bertrand? Section 1 - Hates (02:19) Bertrand: Should we start with things we love or things we hate?  Nuno: I started with hate let's start with hate. And then we go to love. Yes. Bertrand: Let's start with hate. That sounds very very harsh, but there are some reasons to be harsh about Silicon valley, not everything is the paradise you can read from far. Nuno: Yeah. So maybe starting with the most obvious of them all, with crime safety, homelessness, and here we have to be very specific because obviously there's this situation for example, of San Francisco and crime and homelessness in San Francisco, which is pretty pervasive. And in some ways it's been a little bit amped up also with COVID as a lot of people left town and certainly are working more remotely. But definitely there is a problem in San Francisco. There's a problem also elsewhere, Oakland, I think is having a little bit of what I would call a Renaissance. It's getting and becoming an exciting city and and solving a lot of its issues. But obviously we know the history of crime in Oakland is also a very serious one. And then you have places that have obviously no crime at all, like Atherton, the richest town in America or the wealthiest town in America where, finding crime is probably difficult. So really a tale of two bay areas, so to speak or to Silicon valleys   Bertrand: Sorry let's not forget east Palo Alto  Nuno: Yeah. You have these dichotomies exactly to your point Bertrand, where you have Palo Alto, which we know next to Stanford and where a lot of very wealthy people live like mark Zuckerberg and others which is in general, relatively safe here, and then just east Palo Alto, which is not as safe.  Bertrand: The other side of the highway. Nuno: literally the other side of the 1 0 1. And so again, in some ways it's a little bit quintessential American, right? We know that from other cities like Chicago and in LA and other parts of the U S where you have certain areas that have  for a variety of reasons a significant amount of lack of safety and crime and all of that. And then you have areas that are extremely safe and extremely  controlled in terms of crime as well. So I think the first hate we probably both share, there is a feeling of being unsafe in certain areas here in San Francisco. There's parts of the town where you walk through that,  depending on the time of day you're moving through, et cetera, it does feel incredibly unsafe. Both of us moved here from Beijing and, that's definitely very different from Beijing.  And that's clearly a big hate on my list. Bertrand: Yes, Beijing is definitely safe. I still remember one of my trips to San Francisco before living here and taking naively a hotel just four blocks west of the center of San Francisco, Union square and ending up in the Tenderloin, not realizing that it will be full of homeless people, needles, feels very scary at night. So that was a mistake. You don't want to get a hotel in the Tenderloin.  For me, however, what has been amazing is that first it's such a great, beautiful city, world city. Right in the middle or very close to the middle, you have such an area of   somewhat lawlessness, but  it feels like it has extended across the years to the rest of the city. And that has been something pretty scary. I've heard stories, anecdotes of people I know very well,  very close to me who got mugged at gunpoint. I know people very close again who have been beaten so strongly in the street for no reason that they ended up a week at the hospital. And I'm talking about people you will not think they will get beaten by anyone. I'm talking about very big, very large people who ended up being beaten on the street for no good reason.  In the middle of downtown, in the good part of downtown in a way, quote on quote.  So there is a level of lawlessness that, at least when I arrived in 2014 was not there at least not beyond the Tenderloin and it feels that it has expanded. And as you talk about COVID one thing that definitely shocked me when you had so few people in the streets of San Francisco: it was construction workers, and homeless people. So it was very weird because you were used in some ways to seeing 10% of, I don't know, homeless people in the street 5% and suddenly jumping to 50%,  and obviously they were not wearing mask or anything. Nuno:  The point on expansion, I think when COVID, as I mentioned with people moving around did amplify the areas of town where people were moving into. And also there were encampments and specific areas that were allocated for homeless people. So obviously there was a bit of a change in terms of the geography of it. Homelessness in San Francisco has always been linked to a variety of things to drug abuse to mental issues, et cetera. But from what I know,  economic homelessness, so people that really don't have the money to afford the home, et cetera, increased dramatically pre COVID.  I'm not sure where it is with COVID but it does feel in some ways that there are a lot of parts of town   where you wouldn't see a lot of homeless people, and people that were without a home. That those parts of town expanded quite a bit during COVID. We'll see what happens in the future, this is not an anti homeless episode. It's more like, it does feel at times, I think San Francisco is a particularly good example of that, that there's a lot of crime, that's you just wonder, how can one live and one of the in principle most prosperous areas of the world and deal with that complexity and deal with all of that. And it's not about eliminating and telling homeless people, they need to go away or drug addicted people or whatever. It's more about how do you control crime in this type of environment.  And to a certain extent, it does feel unsafe. I do feel unsafe. So that's our first, that's our first one. Bertrand:  we won't solve this question  Nuno: It's a complex, it's a complex question.   Bertrand: but for sure it doesn't feel right. For sure it's a problem that just got worse, as you say, encampments, tents, that was not something you saw much in San Francisco in 2014 when I moved. It has totally exploded and there are a lot of metrics to back that  and it doesn't fit connected in any rational way to what should be happening in this city.  And you know there are a lot of very weird stuff happening. For instance, I remember hearing that a lot of cities outside San Francisco are dropping the homeless in San Francisco.  So I have heard stories about sheriffs or police cars from these cities dropping the homeless in San Francisco, because they will be taken care of quote-on-quote. You have a lot of subsidies that San Francisco is doing, spending money on homelessness that attracts people obviously and there are crazy metrics. I remember one metric around the cost of homelessness in San Francisco. I think the city is spending $100K a year per homeless person. So basically they are spending more money on each homeless person than the average salary in San Francisco, which is probably around 80 K the average income of the San Franciscan. So there are things that simply don't make sense, and that are happening  in this city. Nuno: There's history behind it. so maybe to finalize this point, cause we don't want to hamper too much on it. It is important to understand the history of San Francisco.  Everyone thinks San Francisco is by nature, a liberal city, a very liberal city. And in reality, it became a liberal city as a reaction to being a very conservative city. There's a great book called season of the witch by David Talbot which talks about that transition, but seen through the eyes of summer of love and the repercussions of that. But again, it's a wonderful thing to look into, as you said and rightfully so Bertrand, we won't solve it. I don't think we understand enough about it to be able to solve it. And many intelligent people have looked into it. But it's definitely a big big hate  Bertrand: Maybe to follow on some things that is a bit more specific to San Francisco versus the rest of the bay. It's also all the issues with permitting and education for people who follow what's happening in San Francisco....