[LA21st]

Originally Posted by ocman

Snap did help launch LA into a tech hub. The tech industry is now booming in LA thanks to Snap, with every FAANG company presence there, thus all the complaints about Playa Vista gentrification. It didn’t launch LA into an IPO hub, though. The litmus test is which cities are paying tech bros 120K at minimum. That wasn’t common in LA before SNAP.



I don’t see how San Francisco gets credit for the increase of tech jobs on the Peninsula, which seems like natural overflow from Silicon Valley. The tech scene is contiguous from Menlo Park, north and south. It stops north of Burlingame until you get to South SF, and then you start seeing a lot of biotech again. From that point, I’d say that’s where SF tech starts. The rest of the Peninsula is more a part of the South Bay ecosystem, just by feel and sensibility.


Also, the talk of the "exodus" of tech companies doesn’t allude to the loss of dominance to me. It alludes to an increasing dominance of Silicon Valley. When you have 2nd, 3rd, 10th expansions, that’s influence reaching further out and growing, not leaving.

When places like Hawthorne, Lawndale and Inglewood are preparing for the tech boom, you know it's exploding. The new media companies are expanding everywhere in LA, I don't remember anything like it. Culver City alone rivals anything else outside of LA itself for production/entertaiment companies.