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So long Silicon Valley, Techies are headed to Los Angeles
So long Silicon Valley. These days entrepreneurs and engineers are flocking to a place better known for wave surfing than Web surfing. Surrounded by the palm trees and purple sunsets of the Southern California coastline, techies have built “Silicon Beach.”
In the past few years Google, Microsoft, Facebook and YouTube have opened offices on the west side of Los Angeles in beach cities from Santa Monica south to Venice and Playa del Rey. They are joined by hundreds of startups including Hulu, Demand Media and Snapchat, which nixed a $3 billion takeover offer from Facebook. Major Hollywood players like the Walt Disney Co. and Time Warner Inc.’s Warner Bros. have launched startup accelerators to help tech entrepreneurs. The city of Los Angeles even hired its first chief technology officer, former Qualcomm executive Peter Marx, this year.
The vibe is eclectic. No office-park chic here. Companies allocate ample space for bikes and surfboards so employees can hit the beach after work.What’s happening here is part of a growing movement of U.S. cities seeking to duplicate the formula that turned the Silicon Valley into a mecca of society-shifting innovation and immense wealth. Cupertino’s Apple Inc., Mountain View’s Google Inc. and Menlo Park’s Facebook Inc. collectively have created more than $1 trillion in shareholder wealth while routinely paying employees six-figure salaries, generous benefits and stock options that can generate multimillion-dollar windfalls.
All the prosperity has caused the cost of living in Silicon Valley to soar. It’s nearly impossible to buy even a small home for less than a $1 million in San Francisco and many other nearby cities. Tiny apartments can cost $2,500 to $3,500 per month.
Prices like those are one more reason that less expensive, but still enticing places like Los Angeles make sense to tech entrepreneurs
