 So tell me, what was one of your favorite stories reporting in San Francisco in 2011? Oh, I, so I grew up in San Francisco. I'm a townie, six generation on my dad's side, and I started the Chronicle as an intern, which was like always the dream. And basically how it would work is I would get into the office on Monday morning, and my editor would be like, okay, tell me what you did this weekend. And I'd be like, well, like I did this, I did, she'd be like, okay, that's a story. Okay, that's also a story. And one time I told her, I went to Frat Mason, and she was like, oh, what? And I was like, Frat Mason, I don't know, just hanging out, I mean, beer's a Frat Mason. Anyway, so my first like tech culture story, or one of my first tech culture stories is about Frat Mason, which was like a neighborhood in San Francisco that Fort Mason is how it's also referred to. And it's just, it's one of these like classic San Francisco stories where it's a place that has all sorts of history and interesting depth and has sort of been taken over by a group of young guys who set up like cornhole and beer pong. And it's actually really fun, but it's also goofy. So I went and spent like a couple of days at Frat Mason for work. Yeah, Nellie was also telling me backstage that she loves covering tech bros. So tell me, tell me why. They're gonna walk out. Like, I write stories that sometimes make a little fun or like embrace a little that embrace the humor of what's happening here right now. But fundamentally, the reason I'm here and I'm devoting my life to this storyline is because I think it's the most interesting and important storyline happening in America. Like I think I can get like super heady on this, but I think it is like when historians look back on 2019, yes, there's a lot of various things happening in DC and this and that, but what is being built in Silicon Valley and what is being built here is what's going to reshape the, I mean, it's reshaping the world order. Yeah, so I think what we're covering is both funny and the most important. So Nellie. Yeah, let me stop rambling. Erin, what about you? So Nellie came to the Times in just 2018. I mean, yes, yes, yes. So I joined last year. But I started covering tech in around 2010 2011 after covering private equity and finance for a number of years during the financial crisis. I kind of realized I emerged from from that mass, noticing that power was really shifting over to the West Coast and the companies that were rising up Facebook, Twitter, etc. were much more interesting than leveraged loans. And the people who were building them were getting very rich and getting a lot of power and reshaping business. And so that's when I first started covering this industry. But yeah, now I just joined the Times one year ago, and I moved to San Francisco as part of that. And tell me what was one of your first favorite stories? So also my first San Francisco story for the Times was about scooters, which felt really appropriate. It was at right when I joined was when San Francisco announced that they were letting two scooter companies operate in the city and neither of them were the ones that had dropped off their scooters overnight without asking permission. It was the two that had gone through the proper channels. And it was like a real message that the city of San Francisco was sending to startups, which is that like the uber playbook, the Airbnb playbook of ask forgiveness, not permission is is done here. And so that was a good initiation into covering startups in this city. And I'm just wondering, I mean, obviously, we can talk about today's tech boom. And I wanted to talk a little bit about today's tech boom, but I also wanted to compare it to the tech boom of the 90s. Well, actually, even before we get there, what, like, I think the big question is, are we in a bubble? And I know anything that we say is speculative, but kind of based on stock tips, I got stuck based on your reporting. Like, what would you say about that? Are we in a bubble? Well, this is a question that has been asked. And this boom has been going on, basically, since the beginning of the 2009, essentially, that's when Uber and Airbnb were founded in the depths of the recession. And the tech industry has been just sort of on an uphill swing ever since then. And I think around 2012, maybe 2014, when this unicorn narrative began to emerge, that's when everyone started freaking out and asking, are we in a bubble? And I can remember some venture capital firms even created t-shirts that said, this time it's different, because that narrative was, you know, they were just every single panel, every single interview was like, are we in a tech bubble? And there were big time investors, Mark Andreessen and Bill Gurley were out there being like, this is a bubble. And we're all in trouble. And the startups are going to vaporize overnight. And it didn't happen. It just kept getting crazier. The rounds kept getting bigger. The valuations kept getting higher. And, you know, we got to the point where we are today where Uber goes public for $80 billion. So after a certain point, if you're screaming that we're in a tech bubble and it's not happening, you kind of just have to stop saying that. And that's kind of where we are now is that like the warnings have stopped. The people who were warning that we were in a tech bubble are done. They're just throwing their hands up like, I don't know, it just keeps getting crazier. And I've been wrong for four years. So but to me, that strikes me as the moment that we probably should be worried. So yeah, I mean, I think there are a lot of things that could that could end this this run. But most of the I'm not an expert. I can't predict the future. Most of the smart people that I talked to seem to think that the only thing that could stop the tech industries, especially in startups and venture like rise is some catastrophic unexpected event like, you know, some kind of crazy thing about trade war or an actual war or like, you know, some kind of act of God, basically, or just like the broader stock market, which has been perhaps, yeah, if it's hard to predict. But so I guess my answer is probably yeah, yeah, I mean, I was looking at the Times had done some reporting on the differences between today's boom and the boom of the late 90s. And I mean, it was just really interesting to see that companies, you and I were talking about this earlier, the companies were staying private are staying private for much longer today than they were in the 90s. I think the average was three years they were staying private before going public. And now it's something along the order of 10 to 11 years. And that's been used as a justification for why we're not in a bubble. It's like, Oh, well, those companies in the in the dot com bubble, like those companies were going public, they had no revenue, and they were losing tens of millions of dollars. And it was, you know, they were letting, you know, retail mom and pop investors buy their stocks. And this is much better because we've got institutional investors who are experts or know what they're doing. They're the ones whose money is at risk. And these companies are getting to billion dollar valuations before they go public. So they're de risked when they go public. I think maybe the fact that they're saying private longer means that they're able to wait longer to figure out if their business models are even viable. And the the influx of private money into these companies is maybe propping up some businesses that aren't viable. But that is one that is one difference. Now, we all know that one of the big pain points, I think, to the tech boom is housing here in San Francisco. And so I just wanted to get a sense just because I'm not from San Francisco. How bad is a problem? How bad is it, guys? Okay, it's not that. As someone who, yeah, someone who just moved here last year explain it, right? Like we don't have to explain it, but we're getting our pitchforks. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, what is, Nellie, I read a story of yours recently where you were talking about kind of dorm living. So like people are trying to come up with ways to figure out how to get around this problem. Are there solutions? Build more housing? Yeah, I mean, one possible solution is to build more housing. I was actually before we did this, I was going back through some of the research that you had sent along. And that narrative has been repeated for the last like decade, like every story, it has not changed. Yeah, the extent of sorry, I probably haven't been holding this close enough. The extent of nostalgia in this city cannot be overstated. Like the fear of changing anything physically. So I think that's been a real problem, real challenge for the city in terms of like how then to deal with the fact, deal with the fact of a huge economic boom of tons of people coming from all over the world who want housing and found jobs. And I mean, a thing that for most other cities would be like incredible and would be, and they want, it has been for San Franciscans a real tragedy because it's by not building housing, we've meant a economic boom has been a tragedy for the residents of the community. So it's created this very strange paradox here. Yeah, no, there was, I mean, an editor today was saying he thought that the start of it was Google when Google started the private buses long ago. And that then every company started following on and then that so then it allowed all these people to come to San Francisco and live in San Francisco. Well, and it's like an endlessly tricky thing. But so the private buses, so what do you want? Do you want the Googlers to be driving cars? Like no, the amount of buses better. Or okay, then do you want the Googlers to live close to Google? Well, Google actually wants that too. But the town around it doesn't want that. So they block housing endlessly. And so if you're 23 and you need to find a room to sleep in because you just got a job at Google, you have very few options. So people were protesting the buses which became the symbol of all that was bad about tech. And it made sense because they were big and beautiful and clean and white and scary and looked like alien vehicles, right? And they would take up normal bus stops. So like I'd be in a bus and all of a sudden this like tech bus would zoom in in front. It just you know, but it was a little great optics. Not great optics. It just became like this really interesting symbol for the city. And I think it still is. It's always surprising to me the way that the tech industry doesn't see those things coming. That is I think the one thing that has like surprised me about like when they do something and you're like, oh, but you realize how that's going to look, right? And they're kind of like, hmm. Well, yeah, but they're like, they're in there like walled garden in Mountain View. And we actually just get a show of hands of how many people that are here work in the tech industry before we really like, oh, yeah. Okay, great. Because I'll take a Google bus here together or like, we realize that we're going to be like, you guys know all this stuff. I don't need to tell you about the Google bus. But as soon as a long time kind of San Francisco person, how do I mean, I can imagine you must feel conflicted at times, right? I mean, you've seen your city change so much. And you're also covering it. Do you have a love hate relationship with the tech industry? I probably fall on the side of probably on the side of I'm into it. I think that the shame has been that the city didn't know how to respond to it well. And so it made a tragedy that didn't need to be a tragedy. But it's exciting. It's great. When I grew up in San Francisco was a little, I mean, it wasn't a little town, but it felt like more of a little town and tourism was the biggest industry. I mean, hospitality still is our biggest industry, but tourism was huge. And there wasn't, I wouldn't have stayed in the San Francisco I grew up in. Yeah, it's a question. The tragedy is that an amazing economic boom, tons of jobs has not translated for the residents of a city into a better life. And that's very strange. And that's not how markets normally should work. Yeah, yeah. Yes. Can't hate it until you love it. I agree. It was the suburbs because I agree. I raised my daughters in Palo Alto. I was right there. Yes, I also play around. People out. You kept pushing people out, right? Yeah. So that's what happened. That's that's that's hold the folks. We are electing accountable. That's elect people who are accountable. And that's really have those discussions because my story is not being told. Okay, my mother, I still go to the house I was raised in, which is right behind San Francisco City College. I have neighbors who come up to me and ask me, did you say this and this and that? Because I've been here for 20 years. I said, well, if you want to qualify, let's qualify. I've been here for 58. You know, so so who are you to tell me what I should do in a neighborhood that I grew up in? That's what irritates me. Thank you. Yeah, opening it up. Let's do it. Let's get into it. Yeah, you right here. I'm a teacher in San Francisco. And I've been I moved here to go to grad school so I could be a common teacher. For the first 10 years of my teaching career, I worked in tech. I made two thirds of my money in tech, and one third of my money in education, but two thirds of my time was in technology. I mean, excuse me, in education, and one third of it was in tech. So I worked in the summers and in spring breaks and on the weekends in tech so that I could support myself as a teacher. At some point, I got recruited to be a creative director at a startup. And they offered me four times the salary I made as a teacher. And I thought then I had no retirement at that point, nothing. And I thought, maybe I should do this. And so I did it for about 14 months and it almost killed me. I cried when I left my students. And I realized that what I really was was a teacher and that working in technology was a way of supporting my educational career. So then I went back into education. This was following the dot com bust. And I've been working in education since. But now as a person who's been working in education for 20 years, I feel like I'm being driven out of this city because I'm I actually profit from the kindness of strangers, basically, you know, I'm in a rent controlled apartment owned by a woman that is 80 something. And if she dies, I don't know what I'm going to do. I mean, so many of us are in these kind of tenuous. And part of my feeling is that I feel like I've contributed my entire adult life to the city of San Francisco and not for the profit of San Francisco, but for the community of San Francisco. But I feel like it hasn't been the favor hasn't been returned. And I wasn't doing it for profit. I was doing it out of a belief in education and educating the children of San Francisco. But things have really changed. So yeah, I mean that that whole like, in reading in, you know, obviously coming out here and I'm from New York. So, you know, I have such a different lens. But coming out here and reading a lot of the coverage, seeing this tension between tech and the community, you know, and that's kind of manifested in some of the story. I mean, like the story that I was reading, you know, the corporate cafeterias and how the corporate cafeterias of a lot of the tech companies were taking business away from local restaurants. And I'm just wondering, like, you know, how are you finding that tension in your coverage? Like, how do you find those threads to pull at? I think when when you're here, it's it would be hard to miss the tension. It would be hard not to see it. I mean, yeah, so it's just the lunch thing was really interesting. But did you get to that story? How did that? Oh, because they were trying to ban cafeterias. So I was like, do you guys want to hear about that? Or do you want to hear more about IPO stuff? Are you into the lunch thing? You know, by the lunch thing. Okay, well, the lunch thing is interesting because it was, you know, in mid market, part of the reason why they gave the tax breaks was because they thought that these companies would come and revitalize the whole neighborhoods, right? And that is a normal idea. But what was mistaken was that a lot of these companies serve breakfast, lunch, and dinner to their employees in the office. And so restaurants that sprung up and that opened, you know, high end restaurants for these folks ended up closing a few months later, a year later, whatever. And so kind of the neighborhood didn't have the neighborhood revitalization or sort of like, there wasn't a lot of stuff that walking along the street, you would run into and feel like you're in a lively neighborhood because the liveliness was inside Twitter or inside square. And and that's happened at a lot of these tech companies, they become walled gardens. And so San Francisco, there's a bunch of the supervisors got together and they wanted to ban tech cafeterias to force people to go out and have lunch. And you can understand on a social engineering point, like that makes sense. But obviously, it is kind of overreaching for that actually ended up. Yeah, I didn't. So it didn't work. But it was a very like symbolic gesture. And it got a lot of people really frustrated. And it gave me a good chance to just walk along Market Street and ask folks how it felt to have a restaurant and how they were struggling to compete. If you're running a Indian restaurant, a couple of walk away from square, how it's hard to compete against free lunch. It sounded like it was like a dead zone for them. People who were right next to Twitter, who are, you know, who had a business, just it was a total dead zone. Yeah, it's it's it's been really confusing and frustrating for the local business owners. Yeah. And I mean, you can probably tie a direct line from that to the now quote unquote IPO tax that is being talked about that may or may not end up passing. But it's basically I mean, it's a tax on income on stock as income. But it's being called the IPO tax because it taps into this like anger over the idea that like all these people are suddenly getting rich, and it's being marketed that way, even though it's not really like maybe an accurate Yeah, it's a return to what the tax level was in 2011 before they did a break. But it just kind of I think it just sort of paints the picture, though, of like what is politically viable right now is like, you know, rage. Yeah, I mean, I'm just wondering, I mean, the easiest way right that a business gives back to a community is through tax revenue. So like, have there been, I mean, this IPO tax, like, where's the state of it? It's not yet. I don't think it's yeah, I think it's unlikely to or what is the latest on that? I actually I don't know. I went to the announcement. They announced it. I don't know what the next There's support for it, but I don't know where it's gonna the problem is they're gonna try. The problem is they're gonna try to do it retroactively for some of the companies that have already gone public. And that is extremely tricky and probably unlikely to actually work out. Right. And also like who has power in that in that relationship, because oftentimes companies are also asking for tax breaks and tax deals. And, you know, and so I'm wondering, because there was that Twitter, the reason that Twitter and Twitter is where their headquarters is where it is, is because they were offered a tax break and that's like the problem with the cafeterias. They were they were offered that tax break in the hopes that they would then revitalize that area, but they haven't. So are there stories of companies giving back? Like, do we have? I mean, they're never gonna do it in the way that it will satisfy their critics. So they can try and they, you know, can do a lot of PR around it. But like, that's yeah. Have you seen our fancy new skyscraper? Right. I was gonna make a ballast joke. Yeah. Fancy new raised up park that we can't walk on. No, of course, these companies give back like, and like, it's undeniable that the city has gotten nicer, like the parks are nicer, the things are nicer, like it so it's not like they're like bad or evil or I don't know. That's I fall in the middle of it, but you guys can like fight among each other and I see some people shaking their heads. This person right here. And I'm very grateful for that. Because it gives me a lot of energy and sucks a lot of energy. It's both and like pro and minus. But this is exactly the point. So we were also talking about community. And I think the main problem is for or let's say when you were talking about saying, Oh, yeah, we need to build more houses. I was always thinking, where should they build them? Where do they build the houses? I don't know where. And that could actually destroy here and there on the community. Like I live in Ingleside Terraces, which is one single family house with detached very beautiful. And I cannot imagine that would be great for a lot of skyscrapers and thousands of buildings. But that will destroy the beauty and the beauty of the city, I think. So it is pro and con like, yes, of course, we have to deal with the people who are want to come into the city. But on the other hand, we are not we should not destroy the city by saying, Oh, we have to build and build in this and do something different. That's how I see it. And I think we should not always point on the boo boo boo tag industry. Because, you know, I think they give back, as you said, you know, they try to do their part as well in a certain way. Maybe everybody of us sees it in a certain they think, Oh, yes, well, they should do it in this way or in that way. Everybody has their opinion. But they think it reached them at a certain point. And I was really happy when I was reading two days ago from the New York Times that I think why I think they were posting that who wise that Google or yeah, I think Google was and other big companies were forced not to sell anything to Hawaii again, Hawaii or Hawaii, and they still do it. This is power, guys. This is power. They're saying, No, wait a second, we can't do that, you know, and that is again, and the politicians are saying, Oops, what can we do against it? So I'm, that is also one point. Yeah. Hey, wait, let me go. So, so I, I, I've been here for over 25 years. And so I survived the tech boom and bust and the other tech boom and bust and then the other tech boom and bust. And like you, I remember this is kind of a provincial town. Right. And I feel like we have moved to a world class city now and that technology is here to stay. And what we're trying to adjust to is the fact that it is here to stay and we have to make it work now. Yes, yes. So, you know, New York is, is finance and media. We are now tech. And so we have to, we have to find a way to balance these things and not try to try to suppress technology companies that are here to stay. Now in the, in the, in the dot-com bust, everyone left right after the dot-com bust. And so I think the fear is there's gonna be another bust and everyone's gonna leave again. And so the question of whether there is a bubble here, I think is a big question. And I don't think that's gonna, I don't think technology is going away, but that's just my opinion. Well, worst case, they leave and we have the Transbay Terminal. It's nice to keep it. To that point, one thing that, that I've noticed that's interesting in the last couple of years is that the tech companies themselves, this particularly the smaller startups are actually having a really hard time surviving here. It's hard for them to compete against Google, Facebook and Apple to hire. It's hard for them to, you know, like find housing for their employees here. And so a lot of companies are very quickly in the beginning opening second offices in Denver or Phoenix or LA or somewhere else. And some of them are even starting with their executive team here and fully remote from the beginning. And so I found that like they, they might start leaving or like trickling out into the rest of the country without a bust because it is so competitive here. And I don't think that's a bad thing. There are a lot of cities in the US that would love to have a booming tech economy and are like eagerly welcoming those companies. And so it's, it's been a, it's been a trend that's really accelerated in the last couple of years especially. And I don't think it's a bad thing. But luckily the venture capitalist are no offense if any are here are lazy and they don't like to get on planes. And so they'll always be here. Okay, they only counter to the idea that Silicon Valley can be spread or that San Francisco can be spread out across the country is that there is something to be said for the geographic closeness and tightness of it. And there's a reason why we haven't seen another Silicon Valley burst up and I've covered the other innovation zones and I've wanted it to work, but they haven't. And I think part of it is if you work at a startup and your startup fails, you can get another job really easily without having to change your life. It's not a big deal. Hopefully there's no stigma to the failure here that you don't have to worry about your lease because you're in the same part. Just logistically, I get why it's been so consolidated and it took me a while to like really, because I was like, why everything's remote. Everything's on email. Why did they, but the, yeah, no, it's been a spread. It's been a slow, a slow burn, but I do feel like it has accelerated in the last couple years. Yeah, what's your theory? When you have diversity of thought, I mean, when, when you take a place like, and I don't want to say Denver's homogenous, but a more. You can say that. It's the same space. I speak to not necessarily my own experience, but the experience of others who have had to work with other offices outside of Silicon Valley and they see that the teams are not as diverse in their thought process. They do, they do not necessarily bring the same kind of out of the box ideas as here. And I don't mean to say that, you know, or to dismiss that other areas cannot provide that, but there is something to be said about how, yeah, just, I think it's about the fact that in a mindset that we have, we are more receptive to open, to just being open and honest and bring out any and all ideas, regardless of how crazy they may seem, because look, look at Elon, right? Okay, that's maybe too crazy. Well, that's my theory. Yeah. I mean, one of many reasons why. No, I love that theory. Yeah, let's go in back. I don't know if there are any points. Oh, yeah, sure. The topic at hand. I'd like to hear about IPOs. Yeah, let's do more. Do people have questions related to the IPO discussion? IPO Palooza? Okay. I'm going to out myself. I work at Slack. So congrats. I wish it was as, you know, great for me as it was for Stuart Butterfield. I have a question about how the IPO can impact like this city. I think I'm young. I moved here in 2015 specifically for the job opportunities, and I was attracted to Slack specifically because I knew that they were going to go public and I wanted something like that. I have a lot of guilt about being the problem. I read a lot of what's going on in the city, and I feel shitty about it, and I feel like I want to do more. Have you talked to anyone in your reporting that actually has actionable solutions that people who work in the industry can do? Because I would be really interested, but I haven't really found anything other than volunteering at my local homeless shelter or anything like that. Just curious to hear your thoughts. That's a great question. Yes. I mean, yeah, well, there's a lot of forms of philanthropy that's not an area that I cover, but there are a lot of tech billionaires that are donating money in their various chosen ways. So there's that. You can give your money away. You can volunteer. You can organize company volunteer things. I'm like way out of my depth here because I cover finance. Yeah, I mean, so I'm just wondering the other thing about I think the tech outbos that I've seen is in terms of the coverage, right? We're creating many, many, I think there was a number that we saw. 5,000 millionaires. 5,000? Yes. Estimated 5,000 millionaires created this year with the IPOs. Wow. And that's of about like $100 billion of expected funding raised through the IPOs this year. Wow. Yeah. And I think that there was another number that was cited somewhere about how one out of 11,000 people here is a billionaire. Billionaire? Or a millionaire. I mean, it's hard to wrap your mind around what that exactly means because I don't know 11,000 people, so it's not like I... Right, right, right, right. Is that a small amount? Is that a little amount? But I do think that San Francisco is clearly like a microcosm of a larger national problem, which is this kind of income inequality problem that we've been talking nationally. Like, and I'm just wondering like, both of you have, have you investigated kind of income inequality here in the city and how, like, the efforts to combat it? I mean, I think that with the IPOs, and just to get back to your question, like, you shouldn't feel bad for being an ambitious young person who came here to make their living. Like, that shouldn't be punished or stigmatized. I think that there is an enormous fear. We already see the inequality here so viscerally every day when you walk on the streets and you cannot ignore inequality here. I think inequality is an American problem in every city. It's happening and it's growing all around the country, but here we feel it immediately. So, yeah, there's a real fear that the IPOs, that 5,000 new millionaires, that very few housing units are sold every year, that this is all going to just get more intense and that the, instead of the bust that everyone was promised a few years ago, instead, there's just more boom. And so it's like, it's a little bit of feeling of exhaustion, a little bit of feeling of fear. The conversation about kind of universal... We think about inequality all the time. The conversation about universal basic income, I feel like, is happening more actively here on the West Coast than on the East Coast. And I'm wondering if that's a result of kind of the millionaire flood. Yeah, because... It's a guilt. It's guilt and it's also Silicon Valley people thinking that there's going to be like a quick, easy fix to a problem and also a quick, easy fix that has nothing to do with the established government system already. That can't be the solution. It must be like this other random techno solution. So, yeah, universal basic income is really trendy right now. You're raising your hand a lot. Do you study? Only if you study UBI or something. No, you don't. No, no, no. But it's this idea that inequality is going to be so bad and there's going to be a huge class of people who just don't have any jobs. And so the only solution for this techno future that a lot of people in Silicon Valley think is relatively soon is to just give people money. And it's a pretty, like somewhat popular idea. Yeah, people like it. Actually, but the Sam Altman banked experiment has been not huge. Tell me about that. What's success? I mean, I haven't actually covered that, but I don't think they got a lot of participants for it. There are other studies and examples of this happening. Actually, there's like one long-term one that happened with the Native American community that actually showed that long-term it did help pull people out of poverty and it like, you know, got them ahead in life. And so there is a lot of value. There's a lot to be said about it, but maybe not the way Sam Altman's doing it. Yeah. If the future that these companies or that these venture capitalists see happens, like then radical new solutions to inequality are going to be what will be necessary to maintain a stable society. I mean, you can't you don't want San Francisco to turn into Johannesburg where we have like the haves have to have electric fences and security guards. And I think that there's a real fear about that. Like I'm working on a story now. Don't tell anyone on like private security on the rise in the city. I've been working on it for like six months. So it's like, but like people hiring more private security and home security and all that. And then, you know, a lot of things that you start to see in radically unequal societies. Have you talked to Kim Kardashian's private firefighter? That seems like your first call. That's a really good point. Thanks for that. As you're a signing editor. Thanks, Aaron. Yeah. Okay. So I'm wondering if you guys spend any time looking, I mean, there's a lot of genius going on in the tech industry. But I feel like we're missing the genius piece of how to take the success of a company that moves in here that grows that has developed a lot of wealth and make sure that what they're doing also includes how to improve the community around them. Like you can build a Salesforce tower and what's the amenity that the rest of the city gets from that? Not sure that there is any, but shouldn't there be? Are there not? Don't we need some geniuses to figure out how to take our capitalist approach here and turn it in such a way that when they're building their, you know, monstrous buildings and their great success that there is some way to take all the rest of what's around them into consideration as the whole? Are there geniuses around here that are motivated to think that way and help us out of this? I mean, I actually have seen some evidence of that in the last couple of years. I think for the first time, a lot of people in the tech industry after the 2016 election, and they saw sort of like the Russian meddling in there. They sort of started looking around and asking, like, what are we building here? Why am I working on this? I don't think this is a universal. I can't generalize, but I've seen a lot. I've talked to a lot more people who have said, oh, I don't want to be working on ad targeting or privacy invading thing. I want to take the money that I've earned from Facebook or wherever and start something that maybe can actually make a real difference in the world. And like, I've seen a lot of interesting social impact companies rise up, social impact funds doing this kind of investing, like, long way to go. But like, it actually has given me a little bit of hope that like, okay, it's not the stereotype is true in some cases, but not all cases. And there's been a shift in thinking where it's like, let's not just do this because we can. Let's ask if we should and why and maybe not do it if it's a bad idea. Well, Google did apparently have an ethics department and then that guy left and became one of Google's biggest critics. I don't know if they still have an ethics department or not, but that's also the media's job a little bit. And Salesforce is a company that doesn't have a corporate cafeteria, right? Yeah. So those employees do have to go into the streets and buy lots vocal about their one percent give back. He's been and he rags on the other CEOs for not giving back enough and he's been a pretty vocal give back guy. You with the beard and I like I like your pocket. You were talking about Salesforce and it reminded me of the cultural blindness and the genius melded into the same people. Salesforce helped build a beautiful park on top of the Transbate Terminal. Go into the Transbate Terminal and go look for a map to tell you how to get around the city with the buses that go through that terminal. And you will see one paper map on the wall and that is it. There is no thing like Grand Central Terminal with a marvelous group of people to give you directions on how to go where and what buses to take and what transportation. Salesforce may be brilliant in terms of earning money, but they are culturally blind when it comes to actually providing the services that they actually fund to build. And they could have built beautiful high tech computer operated terminals there to give people direction and they didn't do that. Thank you for that question. A little bit of a statement in a way. It seems like the main the main theme here is how is technology transforming community. Yeah. And in a way there's no big story here in that the Bay Area has very limited housing because of the geography. And it's one of these things where you see an expansion of Silicon Valley in part because of the rise of this platform type of economy where it's more of a winter take all. And so those platforms are often emerging here. You mentioned companies that if they go and somebody is looking for a job somewhere they can always find one because it's a startup. That kind of leads to the second observation which is a big trend here is I think that people who depend on the return on capital have been doing pretty well. But people who are reliant on the return on labor have seen diminished optimism. Yeah. People who take parts. I think there's three drivers for that. One is we're going to we have a lot of questions in the audience. I think we're going to have to cut but but yeah. Yeah. All right. Yeah. No. You with the red shirt. Hi. So I'm thinking about the tensions you know that we're all thinking about between tech and the community in San Francisco and I live in San Francisco. I also teach in San Francisco. I'm not in tech. I'm a pretty vocal critic of tech. I live in the outer sunset and I can just say anecdotally that on my block there are most of the residents have lived there for a long time and there are a few new residents who are venturing out few new techies or Googlers or whatever or venturing out to the outer outer sunset. And and those people don't participate in the community that exists on our block. You know they don't tend to say hello or hang out with us or it's a it's a different it's a different way of kind of being in the neighborhood. You know like and there are these neighborhoods all over San Francisco like small little enclaves and I think that a lot of the tension that exists comes from like a kind of a maybe a user's attitude towards San Francisco. You know when I was a kid I lived on the peninsula and all of our fathers and some of our mothers commuted to San Francisco for jobs but then commuted out of San Francisco for our homes and now people commute to like the reverse commute has become the commute which is very interesting to me and why is that right. And I think it's people want to live in San Francisco because of the cultural amenities in the city but the cultural amenities are people's neighborhoods and people's communities. They're not like playgrounds that can be used up or purchased and so there's this tension between kind of like the people who live here and have made San Francisco interesting or colorful or diverse or you know whatever you want to call it and then there are you know newcomers maybe with more money or more resources that want to participate in the in the cultural communities that have been built but don't quite know how to enter and I think you know just to answer your question well this person's on you know well how you know how do we enter the community. I mean I think it's just as simple as like being a good neighbor or being a good friend like just like taking the time to participate in that community that already exists rather than seeing it as like a playground to be used or to be purchased. Talking to your neighbors is a way to get back. The New York Times supports that. Any questions? Well no I think the one the one thing that just to tie it back to sort of the topic is that one of the big differences now is that these IPOs all of the companies that are going public and a lot of their employees are actually based in San Francisco versus like in the last in the last boom it was very diffuse all across the valley and it feels a lot more intense now because it's very much concentrated here and I also just wondered like you know listening to your story is just like how much also is generational and how much is also like people finding communities in their company as opposed to their neighborhood you know because like you know Nellie you were talking about the walled off gardens is like how much are people finding community just by they're talking to their colleagues and given that we now are in this kind of 24-7 work environment that your community is really just the people that you spend all day with and your identity is your job yeah work is your life and yeah that is a whole other plague that is that is not just unique to San Francisco but is very strong here right and so it's like you know you're going to a place that is actually that's considered your community when you come home you're it's almost just a place where you sleep as opposed to that work is our family right but we've all been told that everyone in our generation I mean I'm just wondering whether that's just a generational difference as opposed to a tech versus kind of community we don't have any neighbors because cubicle mates are open office plan buddies and we will complain about our neighbors on next door you and then and then you go ahead just kidding don't do that hey y'all um I'm also a San Francisco native and I feel like I'm a San Francisco defender often with so much onslaught of this narrative anti-tech um help me make my case why is San Francisco still a great person for a young person that doesn't live in tech to move before I let Nellie make that case I would like to say that having just moved here when you're going I was here I was so surprised by when everybody asked oh how's it going how do you like San Francisco and I'm like it's great I love it and they're like what no one believes me I found myself having to really like say yes like it's beautiful I love my neighborhood I love the cast or theater I love like this and that and like there is a lot of like I want to like it I live here now um there's a lot of things that are beautiful and amazing about it but also it's flawed just like New York where I came from so I think part of the reason why the narrative on San Francisco has gotten a little bit skewed is and this is my like California bias but I think part of it is that most our media capital is in New York all most of the writers are in New York the stories are being told from people who live in New York they're looking at San Francisco and um it seems weird and foreign and strange and also um they don't like that it's become so powerful it's upsetting it's disturbing on some like kind of emotional level so I I think part of our bosses in New York will be watching this the haters no I um what's my case for San Francisco go for a walk I I I've been dating this girl who I'm trying to convince to move to San Francisco and it's been a lot of walking around landsend what Chrissy Field we did Golden Gate Park did you ride a trolley no I've actually been on one Kelly and there was a question back there you've been to Tosca hi so you all mentioned the sort of generational component and I'd love to get your guys's thoughts on some of that and the sort of institutional forces arrayed against that how sort of do you grapple with the fact that like I'm 24 it's gonna take me like I've done the math on how long it would take to own a house and I've heard people defend their single family houses and say this is my neighborhood I grew up in the Bay too I can't buy a house here I can't like stick around here if I want that and there's this anti-growth narrative and also the huge tax benefits that are given out through prop 13 to an older generation so how like this connected with the tech thing like could you please speak to that and sort of the generational component to this anti-growth discussion I mean I actually don't think that's necessarily unique to San Francisco there's a I mean I I feel like I log on to Twitter as a dutiful journalist every day and I see this like generational war happening between like boomers and millennials and they they're they're stereotypes but there's also a lot of like truth to some of the criticisms and it's it seems like it's only getting worse unfortunately I don't have a good solution to that but I I do think that you're absolutely right that that that tension is I went that is definitely not just a San Francisco problem I mean being someone in New York you know you think about like the people who rode that real estate room and are all kind of cashing out and benefiting and then the new generation of people coming to the city who can't afford I mean I agree it's like not loaned so security there's like a whole bunch of you know like people who had pensions and pensions don't exist anymore I mean so yeah I agree and there are people like the I'm doing a story on the or that touches a little bit on the yinbi movement the yes in my backyard movement and I went to one of their infosessions that on now now I tell what is yinbi like what is in my backyard is a is a pro-development movement to build in San Francisco to build more housing here the idea being that that will make San Francisco more affordable and I went to their like intro to yinbi meeting two nights ago last night so and it felt a little bit like the generational war aspect felt really real it was a lot of young people at sitting in folding chairs while someone was giving a talk about like literally saying like here's another thing to be mad at your grandparents about and then like don't forgive them for this and and it was really interesting on the flip side there's also like a powerful age discrimination that happens especially in the tech industry and like I hear stories all the time about that that are really like surprising and heartbreaking as well it's thinking about it as a generational war though for me thinking about stories has been really useful and interesting like reframing it that way it's starting to become like I'm in from both ways from like yeah how big is the yinbi movement like have they made any progress I'm Connor Doherty you guys should read our colleague Connor Doherty has been covering this has a book about this movement coming out he knows email Connor this question right here where you're old and I knew then I would never be able to build a house I don't own a house I think that's always been true here I think the difference has been when I came it was to do stand-up comedy and I have watched the city go from being embracing the arts to being very patronizing about the arts to now being hostile to those of us who chose not to make money I echo what the teachers are saying who just wanted to embrace San Francisco in a real way and now it's an actual resentment how dare you be poor and live here you know as a typical rent control person I literally have a landlord who's trying to kill me because I'm now the old lady upstairs with the cat and he can get four thousand instead of one thousand and and there actually isn't a housing crisis specifically I know in my building they've left many units open because he won't rent unless he can get the four thousand dollars so I wanted to say I'm glad the young girl here feels a little bit guilty and is questioning how I can get back no no only to say that a proxy for your whole generation I'm very sorry or a Google bus it will make her realize as the other woman said that it starts with the individual it starts with neighbors the city has become have and have knots I view the knots as neighbors on the street I'm now about to turn 60 I spend my days just feeding the people in the alleys which is not the vision I had of coming to San Francisco in the 80s but I'm just saying it every tech person you know they don't get home till eight so how can they go to the restaurants how can they go to the theater how can they go to the movies they do just come home and sleep and I think you hit it right on the head to say it's more generational than tech but those two things are completely tied together and I also just wanted to say I am thrilled that it's all women up there that and that you've been articulating the stories I use your stories I get the times and I cut out your stories every day to send to other friends to try and explain what I've been trying to articulate about what's happening to San Francisco thank you so thank you and we report to a female editor who reports to a female editor who reports to female editor so nice you're based out of New York and I always felt like god they've got the essence of San Francisco right so they got an alley so thank you thank you for representing us good or bad what what a lovely crew that the library is like always the best crew this is a great a great all right um right here have you seen like Harry Potter in like a sorting hat like five or six years ago there was that story about the tech company that came to the mission playground and took over the soccer field so um that was an interesting story but I'm also wondering like I'm hearing a lot about small business owners that can't keep people because even if they're paying above minimum wage they can't those people can't afford to live here and no one's commuting in for like a minimum wage job so what I'm curious about is where are those stories and how are we telling as a society the I mean there aren't enough of those stories you're right yeah there needs to be more and can you my cousin has like a bunch of bakeries in the city like Jane cafe they're awesome and um she's always telling me about how hard it is to get bakers like mission pie can't like all of those like historical businesses can't afford to keep people because they can't afford to live on minimum wage we should cover it more you're totally right thank you are we yeah yeah let's say yeah we have we have a time for maybe two more questions but I'm actually curious how are stories approved like what what what is the I split my editor 20 and I say what is I mean you know when you when you pitch stories to editors like what are are there ingredients criteria I mean I know that the daily we have kind of a criteria but I mean it's uh there are our most limited resources is the reporter's time and so we are constantly having to balance what is going to have the most impact um what matters the most um and there's a lot of like crazy tech stories or like stories of tech companies doing wrong that I want to do but they they are so they're not they're not big enough unfortunately and like I don't have time to do every single story and so it's constantly a matter of weighing like which one it matters the most which one is has will have the most impact and which one like can shed light on something like that society cares about um and so that is like kind of the challenge that I'm constantly facing is like why would this matter and the funny thing about covering startups is that like I the bar keeps getting higher and higher where like I'm covering like I covered Slack's IPO for example um and I covered Uber's IPO but there are a lot of other big crazy IPOs that have happened that my editors just like that's not big enough we need to like only focus your time on the biggest one so it's a it's a real trade-off and then Nellie just writes about all kinds of crazy stuff that's true yeah okay two more questions I think I well actually maybe one more question sorry I just saw the time um who's okay okay yes great jacket or sorry panjack Hamlin I was a pack heights Brad oh I've lived so I've lived in the Bay Area my entire life my parents are Irish immigrants are family businesses on Valencia Street and so it goes but um David Talbot wrote uh Season of the Witch which is an amazing book that details how the city that I grew up in and a lot of people here moved to came to be in the 50s and 60s and 70s and 80s and the artists and the hippies and the gays and the immigrants and the firefighters and the lawyers and like it feels like that city is being dismantled right now and there are amazing new things like and there are amazing things that will always be here like the Goliath Bridge woohoo the Alamo draft house fantastic the Giants ballpark great and there's amazing things and it's not just like fuck the google bus even though I want to say that a lot but that city that Talbot wrote about that we all love that this mystical thing that that uh the last black man in San Francisco is about like what does the tech industry does the tech industry have any responsibility to that city or is it just the people who live here scraping together to try to keep that intact or is it the city's government or the state of california like do we care about that city or is it just like ah there's the hate ashbury and there's some hippie in a tie-dye t-shirt and like that's a it's a quaint thing but do like do we care about doing other things in the city or is it just tech like my wife and I we have a startup in san francisco it's a woodshop that we run out space to and people in the bayview district like that's a startup that's a new business and nobody cares and like we're creating jobs but like does the tech industry own anything to that or is the tech industry just like doing its thing and that's great and everything will trickle down or is it like the responsibility of the mayor and the board of supervisors and the people of san francisco to preserve that history and i think that's a fantastic question it's it's one i've thought about a lot but maybe never articulated quite that well um and i think it's something that every individual has to kind of think about there are probably a lot of people in the tech industry who are like no that's not our problem we don't care about that i'm here to do my tech thing and there are probably a lot of people who are like no no i love this too i might not be contributing to it in the same way but i want to be and so i i think it's totally an individual level company level investor level whoever you are thank you i just want to reintroduce our guests erin griffiths who covers startups and venture capital for the new york times nellie bowls who covers tech and culture for the new york times and thank you so much subscribe to the new york times and for your comments