SF Energy Woes

I’ve been writing quite a bit about how the energy is lacking in San Francisco’s downtown. Everything is just a bit boring nowadays. My office has at most 8 people at a time when there are no visitors, and while my coworkers are great, I just miss the overall energy of the city.

Prior to COVID, there was this startup energy that was different. Groups of individuals wearing the same startup backpacks walking to happy hour. Spontaneous run ins with others in fintech. Waiting in a lunch line with your competitors. I loved that SF and I miss it.

I tweeted about this a few weeks ago and based on the response, it feels like nearly everyone remaining in San Francisco also feels as I do. It was great to see that I wasn’t the only one feeling this way. I had multiple people DM me asking to grab a coffee and lunch.

I was stoked when this happened and I’m meeting my first “Twitter friend” post-pandemic tomorrow for coffee. I don’t know where these meet-ups will go in the future. I think a great outcome will be if we can get a group of startup folk together into a regular happy hour or lunch so we can expand outside our immediate colleagues, but we’ll see.

At minimum, I’m hoping that these regular meet-ups turns into at least bringing back some of that pre-COVID startup energy in San Francisco.