Since the earliest days of the Internet, the Seattle tech community has been haunted by a mythical dragon lurking in its garage. This beast has long peddled a false dichotomy: build your startup in Seattle or pack up for San Francisco. It’s time to slay that dragon once and for all.
Today, I’m thrilled to announce that Foundations is expanding with a new San Francisco office, open to all our members. This isn’t about abandoning Seattle. In fact, we’re adding another 5,000 square feet in Seattle as well. It’s about giving our community the best of both worlds. No more choosing sides; we’re bridging the gap to empower founders wherever their journey takes them.
The Dragon’s Origin: Hope, Cope, and a Dash of Self-Promotion
Let’s be honest about how this dragon came to life. For years, it was fueled by a mix of genuine hope and a hefty dose of cope. Seattle boosters pitched the narrative hard, sometimes out of optimism, but usually because well… the sunk cost fallacy is real. So it had to be true, right? After all, who wouldn’t want to believe that Seattle could rival the Bay Area without all the hassle?
But like any tall tale, there’s a kernel of truth buried beneath the hype. Seattle’s tech scene exploded thanks to the rise of Microsoft and Amazon, turning the city into a magnet for engineering talent. Tech outposts from giants like Google and Meta followed, bringing world-class expertise. The talent here is undeniable: deep technical skills, a willingness to tackle “unsexy” problems, uniquely loyal, and a much higher signal-to-noise ratio compared to the froth of SF. Depending on what data you look at, Seattle now boasts more software engineers per capita than the Bay Area market itself.
Then came the Great COVID Migration. Remote work boomed, and tech workers flocked to Seattle for its quality of life; affordable housing (relatively speaking), ability to raise a family, stunning nature, and a more balanced existence. For a moment, it felt like location didn’t matter anymore. Hope reigned supreme: maybe Seattle could finally compete with the Bay.
The Parts We Glossed Over
Yet we’ve always conveniently ignored a few inconvenient realities, the biggest being serendipity… or rather, the lack thereof. The random chats, bountiful intros, and high-signal events that spark breakthroughs are harder to come by in Seattle’s spread-out, anti-social vibe. For startup folks early in their career it’s always been a better decision to be in San Francisco, whether as a founder or as an employee. Career opportunities, while solid at the bigcos, often feel limited for ambitious founders chasing hyper-growth. Building here wasn’t insane, but it required grit.
Something shifted in 2024 when we launched Foundations to address exactly that. We wanted to create a slice of SF culture in Seattle, and we succeeded. We started with co-working space, evolved into a tight-knit community, and layered on programming and community-only events to get the flywheel cranking. We’ve even brought founders and investors up north to import some of SF’s energy without the relocation drama. But as a mission-driven organization with a goal to “Make Seattle a better place to be a founder”, it’s become clear that our north star was, well, pointing a bit too far north.
Data-Driven Mission: The Winds Have Changed
At Foundations, we’re mission-first, narrative-second. Our mission is grounded in data and we are in the unique position to embrace that data instead of rejecting new information that jeopardizes an established business model. Over the past six months (or a lifetime in AI years), the landscape has transformed dramatically. Today, in order to have a real impact, our mission has to evolve as well: from “Make Seattle a better place to be a founder”, to “Make Seattle Founders Successful”. Full stop.
Here’s the reality: local AI startups are losing out to their peers in SF, both in terms of customer adoption and fundraising. In Seattle, despite waves of layoffs across tech giants, hiring has never been harder. With so many people out of work, you’d think it’d be a recruiter’s paradise. But no, AI has changed expectations, and many engineers are either demanding outsized packages while refusing to reskill themselves or striking out as founders themselves. Don’t get me wrong, there are diamonds in that rough, but we’re seeing more noise than ever. For founders without deep Seattle networks, the hires that they’re looking for aren’t here, they’re in SF. They’re also not on Indeed or LinkedIn.
But it’s the numbers that tell the story: one or two Foundations member companies relocate to SF every month, and even teams who choose to stay are splitting time between here and SF more than ever before.
Instead of declaring defeat, I’m here to declare victory: now that adversity has begun to strip away the veneer of our ecosystem, it’s easier than ever to lay the truth bare.
The Dragon Is Dead: Community Over Geography
Why? Because there is no dragon. The smartest founders figured this out ages ago, they hop on flights to SF for fundraising, partnerships, and that elusive serendipity, then come back home to build. They don’t think of geography as a problem, they don’t care where their next star recruit or VC check comes from, they just care about winning. The best companies aren’t hitching their wagons to a single city that, let’s face it, doesn’t always prioritize them. What they truly need is a strong, supportive community that transcends zip code.
Seattle remains an incredible place for deep tech work, with its engineering depth and quality-of-life perks, but SF’s density of ambitious startups, AI innovation, and investor networks are unmatched, and the divide is growing. Now don’t get me wrong, SF is no panacea. Startups down there have their own challenges with hiring and rising above the noise of the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic, but the contrast is starker than it’s ever been. By expanding Foundations to SF, we’re slaying the false choice. Our members get access to both ecosystems without giving up their hard-earned community of practice: Seattle’s grounded talent AND the Bay Area’s electric pace.
Founders in Seattle, you don’t have to choose between home and the Bay anymore. You just need Foundations. Let’s build the future together, dragon-free.