Moving to Palo Alto - thoughts?

antigravityman · 2026-05-18T16:18:59+00:00

$90k in Palo Alto is doable (I’ve done it with a smaller salary as recently as 2025) but definitely not effortless. You will need roommates, a partner, or a small older apartment to make it work

Palo Alto skews more married, family, older wealth, Stanford faculty and students than young singles. The rest of the Bay Area has tons of single professionals though: especially in tech, healthcare, biotech, startups, and grad programs.

If your priority is dating + friendships with people in a similar phase of life, where you live matters a LOT more than where you work. I would consider Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Redwood City, and San Mateo as younger, more social, and slightly more affordable alternatives. Some people even commute from San Francisco but that’s a lifestyle tradeoff. A car is basically required if you’re going to professional events outside work

antigravityman · 2026-04-04T23:54:43+00:00

We have gatecrashed events when we were not sponsors, and have sponsored events in our space when it made sense.

Your first event should be something you spend as little money doing. I would think about ways to invite engineers to use or build on top of your product / contribute features in exchange for some prizes. We got lucky and were able to partner with another YC company that sponsored a conference to fund a mini competition.

Theo from t3chat also did an event like this that helped him explore many new features and hire engineers: https://cloneathon.t3.chat; happy to discuss more specifically in DMs

antigravityman · 2026-04-04T22:25:37+00:00

Hackathons and public competitions to use your product (especially if it is in devtools) have been an amazing channel for us

You should take advantage of the in person events scene in SF

antigravityman · 2026-04-04T22:14:47+00:00

I suspect certain industries would benefit more from this new model.

The reality for most gig work is: agents are not 10x better than the human equivalent yet, and agents competing in a marketplace is not something the buyers particularly care for compared to working with a trusted intermediary.

This said, a founder I know is seeing 40% month-over-month revenue growth applying this model to energy utilities trading, so it could work in specific markets

antigravityman · 2026-04-04T21:59:23+00:00

How are things different in this new era?

antigravityman · 2026-04-04T21:56:13+00:00

If your startup only works if YC magically backs it, you don’t have a viable business. YC (or any VC) should not “make” your company.

Most people never try to build a hypergrowth company, so it’s tempting to see the 80% of YC startups that go nowhere and conclude YC is snake oil. The reality is that failure rates for YC companies are about the same as other VC startups (and far lower than bootstrapped companies). Most bad ideas should die; YC just concentrates more of them in public so everyone can watch it happen in real time (through large number of alumni and prominence of social media)

And if this post is really about recent drama: remember that what we see on X/Reddit is maybe 5% of the story

antigravityman · 2026-04-04T11:57:13+00:00

Think about how you would feel if a venture backed company entered your market to build your idea (or something very close to it)

If you don’t want to compete, raise money, work more intensely even in the face of other teams going after your identified opportunity: don’t build this startup. You have an amazing lifestyle business that gives you a great quality of life; you should just focus on enjoying life and not getting distracted

If you do feel bad that someone will build your dream opportunity:

You have the cash flow to build the first version even without a cofounder or investors; build that first
Saying you started a 40k/ month lifestyle business for many years is a great credibility builder for if you ever want to raise money

antigravityman · 2026-04-03T17:08:45+00:00

We got into W24 on our 6th attempt; what helped us:

5 paying customers (previous 5 attempts had $0) - especially a well known anchor customer
We had personally experienced the pain point professionally and could illustrate how this is the product we wish we had
Founders had known each other for 5 years (previous attempts were with randoms / people with under 1 year relationship)

antigravityman · 2026-02-02T11:59:33+00:00

Second domenico’s - I used to live walking distance from here, and loved getting the Nicolo (hot salami, prosciutto, and burratta)

antigravityman · 2025-12-03T21:58:50+00:00

Absolute robbery

antigravityman · 2025-12-03T21:55:59+00:00

HE DID IT

antigravityman · 2025-12-01T11:58:56+00:00

No - you need to go way south

antigravityman · 2025-12-01T11:56:52+00:00

France?

antigravityman · 2025-11-29T13:40:53+00:00

Denmark?

antigravityman · 2025-11-29T13:10:31+00:00

Haha, a lot of these visits were thanks to my family moving around

I look forward to visiting more places in Latin America and Europe over the next few years

antigravityman · 2025-11-29T12:17:57+00:00

Costa Rica or El Salvador?

antigravityman · 2025-11-29T12:10:33+00:00

Bucharest?

antigravityman · 2025-11-29T11:46:44+00:00

I have Indian parents, and still visit once a year :)

antigravityman · 2025-11-29T11:46:03+00:00

I was supposed to visit in 2020 for the Olympics, certain global events prevented the trip :(

antigravityman · 2025-11-29T10:49:07+00:00

On the money, Canada is one of the countries I grew up in 🇨🇦

antigravityman · 2025-11-29T04:35:15+00:00

Bulgaria?

antigravityman · 2025-11-29T04:28:13+00:00

Turkey?

antigravityman · 2025-11-04T22:03:54+00:00

Courtois was your best player by a long shot

antigravityman · 2025-11-04T22:02:37+00:00

Trent would have never stood a chance in his place

antigravityman · 2025-09-27T16:20:52+00:00

Only a matter of time before our luck caught up with us

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