Inside Y Combinator's 60,000-square-foot, San Francisco college town
Take a look inside Y Combinator's 60,000-square-foot new headquarters at San Francisco's historic Pier 70 shipyard. Y Combinator's new offices in San Francisco have been transformed into a 60,000-square-foot campus, inspired by the resurgence of tech workers and startups in the city. The accelerator, which moved its headquarters from Mountain View to Pier 70 shipyard in June, tripled its square footage by expanding into the building next door, taking a total of 60,00 square feet in the San Francisco area. The new campus includes a video studio, meeting rooms, and three vaults for safeguarding office supplies, snacks, and "our secret handbook for building a billion-dollar company." The accelerator's latest batch of founders has 590 founders, with over a third living in or around the Dogpatch area. It has entered into strategic partnerships with local landlords to stay on leases that allow founders to cancel leases early with no penalty, which is helpful for those planning to stay for three months.
Publicados : 2 meses atrás por Melia Russell no Auto
On a tour of Y Combinator's new offices, Jared Friedman walks me through a tall, one-room building with a hipped ceramic roof. Steel columns frame the space, and sunlight streams in through arch windows. In the center, an air compressor like a wheel the size of a Volkswagen bug juts from the floor. This is the place where migrant workers built steel parts for mining and ships as far back as the Gold Rush. And it's where a new gold rush is underway.The full-blown mania in artificial intelligence is bringing tech workers and startups back to San Francisco. By Friedman's account, Y Combinator saw it coming. Last June, the startup accelerator moved its headquarters from Mountain View into its new digs at the Pier 70 shipyard.In January, it tripled its square footage by expanding into the building next door, taking a total of 60,000 square feet in San Francisco. The deal hasn't been previously reported.Friedman, a group partner at Y Combinator who built one of the first startups to pass through it, Scribd, explains that these compressors provided power to the whole shipyard."Today, from the same building, YC is powering the new startup ecosystem that's forming in this area," he said.Located on San Francisco's lower bayside just past the Chase Center lies the new campus. In the main building, the founders eat at long wooden tables in a room padded with orange sound-absorbing foam. Its amenities include a video studio, meeting rooms, and three vaults for safeguarding office supplies, snacks, and, according to Friedman, "our secret handbook for how to build a billion-dollar company."Friedman also dreams of turning the shipyard's old infirmary into a store where startups show off their wares. Already, a startup in the accelerator's winter batch programs robots out of a seating area in the basement.For 17 years, Y Combinator set its base in Mountain View. The new San Francisco outpost was born from a desire to get founders in person again post-pandemic. The program has hosted weekly meetups for the last several batches, but Friedman said it was a logistical nightmare getting all the founders and partners down the peninsula.They started office-hunting in San Francisco in 2019. This time, the partners wanted to create a campus, not another whitewashed, neon-clad coworking space."There's almost no friction in college for you to meet up with somebody else who goes to the same school," Friedman said. "We wanted to create that same feeling."They found what they were looking for at Pier 70, which is owned by the city. Founders can pop over to Gusto's offices across the street to answer their payroll questions and hang out after work at the cocktail and jerky bar, Third Rail.The accelerator has kept its former headquarters in a cul-de-sac in Mountain View for hosting large events.Eight years ago, when I rented a tiny apartment around the corner from the accelerator's new address, few friends were willing to visit me so far off the Bart system. The Dogpatch was tucked away and dingy. These days, its main drag is a young-adult mecca with its gourmet eateries, a bouldering gym, two cheese shops, and shiny apartment buildings.The latest testament to its hipness comes from OpenAI. Last fall, the ChatGPT-maker closed one of the city's largest real-estate grabs of the year with nearly a half-million square feet of office space up the street in Mission Bay.Founders are getting the memo. Y Combinator's latest batch has 590 founders — almost all of them lived in the Bay Area for the duration of the program, says Lindsay Amos, senior director of communications for Y Combinator. That's up from 53% of founders based in the region during the summer 2023 batch. Of the 590 founders in this batch, more than a third live in or around the Dogpatch.In lieu of dorms, the accelerator has entered into strategic alliances with local landlords. These buildings allow the founders to cancel a lease early with no penalty, which is helpful for those planning to stay for only three months.But, the startup factory would prefer they stay put.The group partners believe that magic happens when the founders bump into each other outside the halls of its campus. Some of them know from experience. They lived in the same high-rise apartments in North Beach as young entrepreneurs. "It became the Y Scraper," Friedman said.They're banking on fostering similar camaraderie in the Dogpatch. With the accelerator nudging the next generation of YC founders to settle nearby, this shipyard that sat empty for decades heads for a tech-savvy revival.Are you a Y Combinator founder or someone with a tip or insight to share? Contact Melia Russell at [email protected] or on secure messaging app Signal at 603-913-3085. Reach out using a non-work device.
Tópicos: Academia