Where Is The REAL Cerebral Valley? [Lightcone Podcast Ep. 3]

the center of the tech industry? Why did it all, like, agglomerate here? San Francisco's the place in the world where you can manufacture luck. Within a month of us moving in there, they launched Twitter. I was like, wow. This phase is, like, incredible. Everywhere.

here are people starting companies, really ambitious companies. And then COVID hit. In the last years, some things have happened that have turned things around. They feel the energy. I actually think the biggest factor is that. They have all the building blocks to make San Francisco into the best city in the world.

Welcome back to another episode of the Light Cone. Today we're talking about San Francisco. It was dead but now like Lazarus, it is back. And not only that, we've got a new thing to talk about which is Cerebral Valley.

People from all around the world are coming to move to San Francisco to just a few neighborhoods, we're in one of them in the dog patch to build the future, to build the future of AI. Why is that? What's going on?

I think it's worth just charting the course of San Francisco over the last few years as a starting point. So we we all got to San Francisco in 02/2006. San Francisco was coming out of its own Doom Loop, like, doom loop one point o. The . com bubble? From the . comcrash. In the late nineties, San Francisco was full to the brim again, and then the .

com bubble burst. And when we got there, it kinda felt like a ghost town. Like, there was a lot of vacancy. Rents rents had crashed. And then what brought San Francisco out of the Doom Loop was the web two point o boom. All these YC companies like Stripe and Airbnb and Dropbox moved to San Francisco, and they started hiring employees who moved into apartments.

And, like, the tech economy just, like, dragged San Francisco back out of out out of the doom loop. This is, like, very specific point, like, Silicon Valley geography.

I I remember, like, when we were moving here in 02/2007, there was a real negative connotation about choosing to base your company in San Francisco instead of, like Palo Alto? Yeah. Palo Alto, Mountain View, San Jose, even, like, anything south. And I I think it linked to the . com era where the perception, the belief was that during the .

com era, all of the opportunists had come to and, like, moved into San Francisco because they wanted to, like, live in a cool city and have, like, cool things to do instead of, like, working. And it was a real conventional wisdom that post that era, if you were serious about starting a company, you choose to be based in, like, The Peninsula.

And if you chose to be in San Francisco, you were, like, actively choosing to not be serious about your company. It's a real nega like, investors really paid attention to Yeah.

And we put YC itself in the South Bay. Should should we talk about where YC has been over the years? Yeah. Y Combinator got started in Mountain View on.

one of the most legendary streets at this point. It was called Pioneer Way. And as Hart said, in 02/2005,.

Mountain View was the place to be. Google had based its headquarters there, and people don't look at Google the same way anymore. But in 02/2005, Google was the undisputed king of innovation. All the smartest people wanted to be affiliated with Google, and so Mountain Dew became this mecca for smart people as the place where all the serious technologists were, like, conglomerating.

Another major factor is just in that era, people started people starting companies just tend to be slightly older. Right? Like, even, like, the 10 like, the Google founders were PhDs, like, late twenties maybe. It's not old, but, like, not, like, 21, 20 two just out of college. I think even the Late twenties, early thirties. Yeah. And there was a lot of it from Palo Alto also because of Stanford.

Right? Yep. And people, like, wanted to be in the suburbs, basically. And and the investors wanted to be in the suburbs because they're all older. So it's just this natural pull. And then the first sort of young founder, Mark Zuckerberg, chose to be based in, like, Palo Alto as well. Right? So, like, the serious up and coming startup was in Palo Alto.

Stripe was also initially in Palo Alto? Stripe was also initially Palo Alto. But then, I think, like, YC actually, not because Paul wanted it to, but, like, it ended up contributing to the move to San Francisco. Like, dramatically. Yeah. Like, we probably pulled it forward by years. Yeah.

Because it's all a bunch of, like, young people who wanted to not be in the suburbs, and they actually all ended up being in, like, the same building. Right? Like, you guys were living in The Wisecraper. Yeah. Harj and I lived in the same building.

This building in North in the North Beach area of San Francisco called Crystal Towers that came to be known as the Y Scraper because there were so many Y Combinator companies in it. We actually wanted to be living in the building, but we were rejected.

Really? Yeah. We were rejected because we were we came to submit our application. They told us there were lots of space, And then they told us just go around the corner to the leasing office to get it filled. As I was walking out, I bumped into Justin Khan, who at the time was working justin.

tv, and so he'd walk around everywhere with a camera on his head, which it turns out the building did not like. So they they saw me talking to Justin and they must have called the leasing office to say reject their application. So by the time they got around, they said there's no room left. I was like, man, like one minute ago, you said there was, like, plenty of room.

I was like but so we ended up, like, kinda living vicariously, because we were trying to come over to the building as much as we could for, like, dinners and lunches, and just every time, we would learn so much. Like, you had the founders of Dropbox, and then Scribd was in there, Weebly.

There's actually a very important point here, I think, which is for people who are builders, it's actually important to be around other people who are like that. So go you're anyone who has built something that you respect, that you think is really good, that you want to build things similar to that, like try to be near them.

Like actually just being in a in community with other people like that greatly increases your chance of success. I mean, I think that was true for for us. I mean, that's why we for Posterous, we applied to Y Combinator. Like, we looked at, you know, Steve at Reddit or we looked at Drew from Dropbox or James from Heroku and we said, those are the kinds of things that we want to build.

And I think, you know, today that that sort of continues. Like, you wanna be near people like that. I I my personal experience,.

I grew up I was born and grew up in England, YC, reading Paul Graham essays and hearing about YC and getting accepted to YC in 02/2007 is the reason that I moved. But the initially, I only planned on moving for three months. So that's how long we could stay on the tourist waiver. But as soon as we got here, it was just like a complete world of difference.

Like, I went from being around all of my peers working in banking, consultancy, just thinking I was unemployed or too lazy to get like a real job. And being in San Francisco and the Bay Area, especially amongst the YC founders, it was like, hey, like, everyone's doing a start up. Everyone's, like, in the same boat. We can all, like, support each other. Like, it's just, like, in the water.

Like, it was my first time experiencing being in an environment that felt like nourishing versus draining for starting companies. And you could feel that really intensely,.

like, just being in San Francisco. And then you found yourself in one of those legendary rooms.

very early on with your first startup. Yeah. It was again, just like a total serendipity luck factor. Evan Williams, the founder of Twitter, had happened to be speaking at a conference at my college in, like, 02/2006.

And he'd we sort of, my co founder, he's my cousin Corvier, like we spoke to him and he is like, hey, like if you guys move out to San Francisco, we have some free office space and you should just like, we have some desks and you should just like come hang out there, which is what we did.

And that startup at the time was called Audio, Odeo, which is a podcasting company that was not actually doing very well. And you could actually feel it in the office. I mean, that's why they had space and free desks. Right? Like they had more space than they needed. Was very much people were coming in, nine to five. And so it just wasn't like a a super dynamic environment.

But within a month of us moving in there, they launched Twitter. And and Twitter just, like, took off. And then suddenly, like, the whole energy in the place changed.

There were always like interesting people coming in and out of the office, and just like, you got really energized by being around something that was clearly working so well, and it made you wanna like put in more effort and, like, feed off the energy. Oh oh oh, and what's funny is Harj's startup was in the same office as Twitter. And it.

the same time, I was running a different startup, and Twitter moved offices after they outgrew that space. And they moved into my office building. And so my startup was actually across the hall from Twitter's second office.

And this kind of like this might seem like a a bizarre coincidence, but it's actually, like, not that unusual because all of tech was concentrated into this very small area in, like, Downtown Ansoma.

Like, people who haven't been here don't don't realize just how dense it was, where, like, you could go from any startup to any startup in San Francisco in, like, fifteen minutes. Yeah. I I mean, I remember a very specific example of that. Like, we we left the office to get lunch, and we step outside and we bump into Ron Conway, like the like legendary angel investor.

And he just starts asking us some questions, and we start and we met him at a YC event. And we just told him, like, we've got, like, a bunch of problems. We really want, like, to get blah blah blah as a customer. And by the time we got back to our office, he'd, like, shot off these intros to all of the companies for us, to help us, like, with, like, making sales. Like, was like, wow.

This place is, like, incredible. I mean, the crazy thing, think, San Francisco is the place in the world where you can manufacture luck. And startups,.

for them to really get big, lots of things need to happen to be right. There's something special about being surrounded with all the people that kinda know how, and they're all here, and they're willing to help. Because starting companies is actually a very anomalous thing in other parts of the world. It's a strange job.

And to your point, Hart, starting a company could be looked at, oh, you're just a bum. You're not really working at the beginning. What is it going on? But here, people really celebrate it because people understand.

how hard it is. How was it for you, Diana? Because, like, because you grew up in Chile. Like, how was the move to.

Silicon Valley and being around this culture? So I relate a lot to the story of being a misfit. So in Chile, when I grew up, I was always a weird kid, just stay indoors. So, it was very difficult being the only Asian kid. There were no other Asian kids around. And I really loved reading books. And when I got a computer, I really like also building a lot of these RPG games back then, emulators.

I got a lot into that. And Internet was, like, my bubble, but I didn't know anyone like that. And what was cool is I always admired all the builders, and my dream was that at some point, I would move to be in Silicon Valley and be there.

And what was special that I didn't know, and there was this pull, is that when I got and moved to with Silicon Valley, I started working at Intel with my first job. It's the first time I felt at home. There were a lot of people like me who really like to nerd out and really like to go deep on subjects and building, and I wasn't judged because I was judged back then.

I had to sort of hide and not talk about my interests when I go in that super deep, And that was special where it was celebrated, and you can build. And there's also the experts in different areas, and everyone is.

just as deep as you with building, and it's just as exciting and an optimist instead of being judged on why you like this weird thing. One of the funniest things that I remember from reading Paul Graham essays that I think was one of the reasons why a bunch of us found his essays was he would always describe what it was like in high school to be a nerd.

And then I I think that that might be a common experience for us where, you know, you sort of grow up in the in default society. Default society, you realize is a little bit foreign. It has different values than you. It, you know, sort of values appearance more than sort of the substance.

That kinda keeps going. Way to do it. Right? The and that kinda keeps going even after college. Let's say you for young founders, their friend who may not be founders end up getting whatever the standard job being, an investment banker or working for consulting or whatever or the big tech job. And they end up having the standard life where it's like, okay. They get the promotion.

They get the nice vacations. They get the time off, and a lot of their meaning is more outside of work. And then when you're friends with nothing against that, by the way.

With with your friends are like that and you're doing your startup and you're working twenty four seven and working very hard and not really having a lot of money to take the vacations, the fancy vacations, you kinda get a little bit judged, implicitly, not directly, and that can be a bit demotivating.

And I think what's special being here is you surround yourself with people who are in that same mode, in that same vibe, where those are working hard, and you're chasing your dreams to build something. And it's not locked down that you're not taking a fancy vacation or going to the fancy dinners. It's actually, on the other hand, celebrated that you're working hard and really taking.

taking a leap. You've got such a deep point, Diana. And I think that is actually the true reason why startups and startup founders conglomerate in Silicon Valley.

Like, some people think it's transactional reasons, like, oh, this is where the investors are, so you have to be close to the investors, or, like, this is where the, like, employees are, so you have to be the place where you can hire employees. I actually think those are factors, probably more minor factors. I actually think the biggest factor is that.

It's like people become the average of the people who they surround themselves with. When you're in a city that doesn't value this kind of thing, it's really hard to stay motivated. It's really hard to be as ambitious.

When you move to Silicon Valley and you're surrounded by people, like everywhere here are people starting companies, really ambitious companies, people who are, you know, who are who are really trying to change the world in a very serious, very dedicated way, it just, like, wears off on you, and it makes you motivated to wanna do the same thing.

It's also, like, there's a particular sense of, like, long term ambition here.

where, like, startups just take so long to actually work out and make any difference that everyone who starts out here is on that journey. And it's just, you know, I think ultra generally, like, altruistic and wants to make a difference, but you're also just very incentivized to think long term and not pay attention to, like, short term status games.

You care you kinda care about, like, your relationships over a long period of time. And if you contrast that to, say, like, a finance hub like New York, there's a huge amount of ambition there, but it is tends to be more like how much money are you making right now.

And one thing we all see is people come to San Francisco or YC with maybe, like, they their ambition level, like, they think is at, like, you know, like, on two out of five scale. But, like, they grow from all the other people. And especially if the company starts doing well, like, their ambition changes. Right?

And so, like, and I think that's a very unique thing here where if you're working on, like, technology, like, there's almost no bound to, like, how far, like, your ideas can go. It's just, like, how long do you wanna keep pushing them and working on them for?

And if you're around, like, other people are also interested enough in what they're doing to keep doing it versus trying to hit some, like, end state of success, I think that's how you end up with these companies where you that you have, like, Larry Ellison working on Oracle for, like, decades. Like, I don't think that happens anywhere else.

This is actually a a place that generates social movements.

Like, we believe x. Like, I believe that AI and large language models might re recreate every type of enterprise software. And that's happening, like, right before our eyes right now. Or we believe that, you know, electrification and you know, decarbonization will remake how we use energy in the world. Like that's sort of happening before our eyes.

And then being around people who have those ideas, like not all of them are going to be right. Even having a culture where being wrong is okay, that's very rare.

And I think that's like, you know, having a truly inclusive place where it's basically what do you believe and what do you believe that nobody else believes yet, that that's the very unique reason why I think San Francisco is the most special place in the world. Like, right up until COVID,.

it was clear that San Francisco was the center of the startup and technology world. Right? Like, Completely. Right? Like, every neighborhood was becoming busier. Like, rents and property prices kept getting, like, more and more expensive. Like, it was very clear the center of everything.

And then.

techies more and more. Yes. I mean, yeah. Like, I think that was partly sparking the backlash. Office vacancy was, like, 0. 5%. Yeah. New apartment buildings, especially in, like, the area where the Salesforce tower was built.

I I always felt that felt like another turning point. Like, huge tower, like, that whole area. We had our start up office was based right around the corner from there, and just the new apartment buildings going up on every block, like, it really felt the center of everything. I remember in 2019,.

it seemed like one of the biggest problems that YC had was that there was not enough place to put all the people who wanted to move to San Francisco. Like, was not enough housing. There's not enough office space. We were just, like, bursting at the seams. Yep.

And then COVID hit. What happened in COVID? Yeah. How did things kinda turn around so downturn in a matter of few months?

Yeah. Everything changed in a matter of a few months.

I think right up until COVID, everything we said is very true. Like, there it was clearly the center of the tech world. Like, everything people were moving, but there were clearly problems with the city. Like, beneath the surface, like, homelessness was increasing. Like, crime was increasing. Like, there were all these, like, tensions that people looked past because, like, you had to be here.

And then I felt like COVID hit, remote work became, like, necessary, and it was a chance for a lot of people to finally move out and experience living in another city where they didn't have as many of these problems as San Francisco did. It's like, I would meet people who would talk about San Francisco as though it's like Jared puts it this way, like Gotham City. Right?

Like, if you were on Twitter or if you were just bumping into casual people, they're like, oh, like Like, Francisco? Large? Yeah. Was really like that. Right? It was just like, wow. You're from San Francisco. I'm sorry.

You go out at night.

And it was and this was basically all of, I think, like, 02/2021 and, like, most of 02/2022.

And then in the last year, some things have happened that have turned things around and are starting what Gary's calling this boom loop. Like, what what happened in the past year? Well, the clear thing is AI. Right? Like, the.

ChatGPT launching was, like, a complete, like, reset and brought everyone back. And I think, like, to Garrett like, broader point, in order to work on AI pre, like, ChethratchatGBT three launch, you have to be sort of, like, counterculture misfit. It was not at all a mainstream thing to be working on. Was kind like not cool to work on AI. If anything,.

actually,.

you know, it was a little bit of a dead end for some people at that point. It was a bit of one of the AI winters back then, and people were keep going because they knew something that everyone else didn't. This is that part of being counter.

I think it's it's a really important point because pre that like, and during the COVID remote work period, there were multiple hubs that had the claim to be, like, the next Silicon Valley. I don't think anyone was claiming that, like, any one of them would be as big as Silicon Valley, but there was just, a a general view that, hey.

Like, the future of innovation is just gonna be distributed and dispersed in, like some of it will be in New York. Some of it will be in LA. Some of it will be in London, like, all around the world. But the thing that actually drove the next wave happened in San Francisco, and it doesn't seem coincidental.

Like, if anything, you can argue the fact that the city got so bad, and it's still, like it's come back, and it's, like, now the center again is just evidence of how strong the, like, network effects are here. Yeah. And it's not just OpenAI. Basically, all the AI ended up in San Francisco. OpenAI, Anthropic,.

Scale AI, basically, all the big AI companies, all the big all the big tech AI research labs, it's all in the Bay Area. And now we're saying, like, post ChatGPT,.

like, we're seeing San Francisco really come back. How is it different? Like, what are we seeing that's, like, different in sort of this iteration of San Francisco versus, like, the peak pre COVID?

Well, commercial real estate is down. But I guess the wild thing is, like, we still have some real big problems downtown and in large parts of SoMa. And SoMa was sort of where they allowed to, you know, they where they allowed developers to build housing.

And by default, I think a lot of people watching this who are not from San Francisco, a lot of them might end up in SoMa and then realize, oh, this isn't a place where I want to live, and then they'd leave. But, you know, I think the thing I want people to sort of understand is like Cerebral Valley is not SOMA. Cerebral Valley is actually a play on Hayes Valley, which is in the center of the city.

There's lots of incredible food and, you know, shops and, like, that's where a lot of the best AI companies are choosing to be. Right now, we're sitting in the Y Combinator offices. We signed more than a hundred thousand square feet here. So, you know, the amazing thing now is we can have, you know, three different events going all at the same time over here.

Like, this is a very different part of town that has a neighborhood vibe that's very safe. And so, you know, explore the neighborhoods. Figure out don't just do the default thing which is live in Fi Dai or SoMa. Like, there are so many neighborhoods that are incredible.

And they might cost a little bit more, but you will get the real San Francisco experience if you do As someone that moved back, I think the single thing that struck me most that's different is how much the neighborhoods have changed. Like, it really matters which neighborhood you're in now. I feel like pre COVID,.

you sort of you knew like the Tenloy in the Civic Center were like the bad areas of San Francisco. And outside of that, every neighborhood maybe had a slightly different flavor, but it didn't actually matter too much if you were based in, like, Soma versus Fydeye or all of the or even the Mission. But, like, now, it's, like, it's very important that you pick the right neighborhood. Right?

Like and we I feel like YC, like, now we're in, like, the dog patch, which.

we sort of lucked into, I would say, like, what is probably the best neighborhood in San Francisco. Yeah. How do we talk about moving YC to San Francisco? Just something we talked about for years, but COVID happened and other things happened, and, like, now we were finally in a position to do that. And you two actually led the search for YC's new headquarters.

Do you wanna talk about, like, the places that you looked at and how we ended up here? I mean, there were lots of neighborhoods, lots of different other places. But if anything, we did it startup style, which is.

Dogpatch is really safe. It's being redeveloped. And this is actually before OpenAI moved in over here. And then there was a space right next to where we are right now that was the powerhouse for Pier 70. So it literally housed the the engines that generated the power for where we are which is the shipyards that built a third of the US Navy during World War one and two.

So it's sort of like this incredible symbolic significance of so much power being generated in that that house. That's actually our main event area. And then we just took over the the office next door. And so, you know, now we have a really sweet YouTube studio right here. And across the street, there's also two other YC companies, Astranis.

and also Gusto. Right? The dog patch is great. That's where our center of gravity is. But what some of the pushback you will get from founders about moving to San Francisco and things they worried about? And what's the advice you give them?

Especially international founders, there's a lot of the consumption of news is from Twitter, and it there's a lot of things about being not safe and being scared of coming here. But when they actually move to the right neighborhood, they're pleasantly surprised, which is which is nice. But this is not to say that the city doesn't have problems.

There's definitely neighborhoods that they still should avoid, which we actively advise them where to be, actually.

Which which are the neighborhoods? Where where should people be based?

Personally, I love, you know, Mission Dolores, Noe Valley. These are great areas. They're a little bit more expensive. I think, you know, Glen Park is actually an incredible neighborhood that's sort of, you know, hidden. Bernal Heights is right over the hill from, you know, where we're at in the dog patch in Potrero Hill. Mission Bay is brand new, so and it's very close to YC.

So that's actually AI. And OpenAI. So, you know, I actually think that, you know, during the batch, we actually tell people, can you be within a mile of Y Combinator in the dog patch?

And the reason why is, you know, you're gonna be working eighty, ninety hours a week, like, writing code or talking to users but, you know, on those Friday nights, you're gonna come out to actually this office and we have, you know, a launch event where people demo their software and grab a beer and then afterwards they go out to the bar or grab grab pizza And then, you know, Friday and Saturday nights, that's when you can let your hair down a little bit and actually, you know, see the other people in your batch.

Then those are the relationships that you sort of take with you for frankly the rest of your life. I mean, one of the more surprising things that I'm still surprised by is, you know, when I got married after doing YC, two whole tables were my Stanford friends, but two whole tables were actually my Y Combinator friends. And Paul Graham even came, and he even wore pants.

Got it.

There's a there's actually a founder map that lays out where all of the founders of the current batch are staying. And the center of gravity is around our office here in Docpatch, and that's not random reason. That's by design. And maybe we can talk about why is that. I mean, I remember in my YC batch, we actually did the manual version of this making a collaborative Google Map in February.

And this was while it was still in Boston. And the funniest thing was, that's how I got to know my co founder Brett Gibson. Him and his co founder were working on a different startup called Slinkset. And we actually would grab beer pizza and beers every weekend. And when they couldn't raise money, we ended up sort of merging our companies.

And then so Brett Gibson, who ended up being my cofounder for Posterous, ended up being my cofounder for Post Haven, and then also worked with us at YC on the software team, and now he runs Initialized. And it all started by just him happening to live next to you in Boston when you were going through YC.

And so where you live, who you hang out with, I mean, it's pretty wild that these things end up mattering. And, you know, San Francisco is the best place in the world to sort of build that.

network, that fee I mean, you're not building a network. You're actually just making friends for life, and that's, like, the real version of it. And then you mentioned Cerebral Valley. It did actually start as Hayes Valley, like a play on that. Yeah. But I actually think, like, Cerebral Valley is this neighborhood. It actually is. It's kinda weird that Cerebral Valley became known as Hayes Valley.

I think the real origin for that is just that there is this one hacker house in Hayes Valley,.

but it was literally just a house. But again, to what we're talking about, during the period that that hacker house started, San Francisco was pretty dead. Yeah. It was it was so dead that like, hacker house was probably like the most happening place. You could become the center of San Francisco by literally having the one house. Like, 10 hackers in there working on like AI stuff. Right?

But, like, it's not true today. Like, OpenAI has this huge lease right around the corner from here in, like, Mission Bay, which is next to the dog patch. We're here. Like, the startups are gonna start being based here. Like, this seems like it's the real center. Real.

Cerebral valley. Yeah. Is Right here. This is the real Cerebral valley. And I think a lot of the companies that we're working in with right now, they're gonna find product market fit. They're gonna get their first million, then 10,000,000, then hundred million, then billion dollars a year in net revenue. They're going to fill the office towers in FiDai and Soma.

They're going to build these businesses that create thousands of jobs and they're not going to be, you know, one Salesforce tower. There might be dozens, if not hundreds, in the next ten years. And so we're really talking about a real boom loop here. This is already happening. I was talking to companies from the last couple batches,.

and there's this office space in Soma where there are a bunch of YC companies that just got that just raised their seat around, and they're surrounded around each other. And they feel the energy. There's this thing about being in the right vibe.

They need a cool name like Yscraper then.

I think we're also seeing, like, another just a fact of being here is, like, the AI specifically. Like, if you're working on developer tools, like, a big area right now, like, you want to be here. Like, all of the best engineers who are gonna be using your, like, cutting edge developer tool or infrastructure all based out here.

If you're building AI software, you need someone, especially enterprise software, you need someone who's gonna be your champion and advocate and is gonna take a bit of a bet on, like, a startup that's using some, you know, like, cutting edge AI model that's not fully proven yet. And they're all like, those people tend to be here.

It's always clear that you can build companies outside of San Francisco and Silicon Valley. Like, there's always gonna be exceptions. And maybe there'll actually be more of them over time. But I just think all else being equal, if you're starting out, like, you and you wanna play just maximize the odds to be in your favor.

Like, you should you should be here despite the the fact there will always be exceptions.

Don't you wanna get more lucky here in San Francisco? Exactly. Right? Yeah. Maximize your luck. So the great thing is, I mean, we want San Francisco to be hyper inclusive. And what that means is you don't have to pay that much for rent. You can feel safe walking down the street.

There's great small businesses that are, you know, thriving. And then frankly, this is the place where you should start your startup and thrive here as well. A hundred years from now, what does San Francisco.

look like in tech?

I mean, I'm a big fan of Gene Roddenberry's ideal for Starfleet Command. I mean, this is the ultimate techno optimist dream, which is we unlock so much abundance in the world that money doesn't exist anymore, and people can search the stars to try to find and create their own meaning. And I I think that there's no mistake.

Like Starfleet Command from Star Trek, The Next Generation and Star Trek, you know, the universe broadly, it's like right there in the Presidio in San Francisco.

I think that if you take the agglomeration effects of the smartest people in the world, the best builders in the world, and you put them in one place and they create the scene like this, you know, set of people who all run-in the same direction create these companies that matter and then people stay here and, you know, they make the schools awesome. They build housing.

They actually, you know, invest into arts. We actually make the city the kind of the best city in the world. Like, we have all the building blocks to make San Francisco into the best city in the world where, you know, give us your misfits. Give us your nerds, give us your autists, give us the people who, you know, just wouldn't fit anywhere else.

Like, they have this capability with their hands and with their brain to create something that has never existed before and we put them all in one city and they go and create software and hardware and technology and biotech and climate tech for that will touch billions of people and all of that wealth comes back into this one city and we make the city more and more awesome.

That's what San Fransokyo is. That is what San Francisco could be and we will manifest this. The boom loop is happening guys. So maybe that's a great place to end. That's it for this week of the light cone. We'll see you guys next time.