We’ve spent the past 4 months in SF - a few reflections on this gorgeous city.

My identity is usually that of a ‘digital nomad / entrepreneur’. In SF, I’m “working on an AI marketing startup for founders and marketers”. I’ve been asked to download people’s apps more times than I’ve had to recite the list of countries we’ve been to these past two years - something that happens at least once a day in other countries. Nobody cares about your previous life. They care about what you’re doing now, and how they can help you or you can help them. The side effects are that you’re A LOT more plugged in to your work. I’m constantly thinking about it- how did I pitch it this time? What feature did they light up on? Who can I introduce them? The grind is everpresent. While cool at first, it does get a bit repetitive.

• Insane amount of events

• Adds clout to your startup to say “oh we’re based in SF”.

• Gorgeous architecture / legion of honor / golden gate park

A second observation is that the city is not as bad as it seems online. We were never robbed, thankfully, nor did we have bad encounters, and the majority of mentally ill people are contained in a handful of blocks. Mind you, those blocks are very hard to walk through, but once you make it out so do your thoughts about it.

On another positive note, the architecture is truly stunning, and spans quite a variety of styles.

My biggest dislike is that the city is extremely inconvenient. If you don’t have a car, be prepared to spend hundreds of dollars a week on ubers, city bikes, and Lime scooters. We easily clocked in a couple of hours of walking a day because of this, which in itself is not terrible for our health, but not optimal for getting work done. And, much to my frustration, most stores close very early and cafes don’t have wifi or outlets. In FiDi, some restaurants shut at 3PM, which makes the zone a ghost town after 5. In a 15 minute walking radius from where we stayed in Telegraph Hill, there was only one Starbucks that didn’t open Saturday and Sunday. The convenience of 24/7 stores in Asia truly spoils you. I like to joke that in Europe we’d avoid going home to walk around the city more. In SF, there’s nothing to do after 8pm so we come home to turn on the TV and watch shows set in Europe.