How Founders Can Make the Grind Bearable
June 16, 2025
Startups are hard, but you don’t need to deliberately suffer to succeed.
I am always pushing founders in Europe to move to San Francisco. Just like if you want to be an A-List Actor, you should probably be in LA, if you want to be the best founder you can be, SF is the place. But a lot of founders are nervous about making the move.
The main cost in SF is housing, and it is 20–30% more than other major cities, but you can offset a lot of that with shared living, neighborhood selection, and even locating just outside the city.
Yes, SF might be a new place and far from your existing network, but it’s also filled with other people just like you. Whatever country you’re from, whatever school you went to, there’s going to be lots of people who did the same and are willing to help. That’s the culture here.
Although there’s a lot of change in US politics that most folks in Europe don’t appreciate, you have to remember that America is a big place with a wide range of opinions. In SF and California as a whole, politics is much more European, for better or worse.
Best of luck out there.
