Paul Graham @paulg · Aug 22
@rajatsuri You may well be onto something.
The mission
The center of Silicon Valley used to be right here.
Not that long ago, the gravity of this industry sat squarely in Palo Alto. Founders lived here, built here, and stayed. Over the last decade the locus of tech moved north, and the scene down here thinned out.
None of the fundamentals changed. The talent is still here. The weather is still insanely great. Our families are here. What went missing was the connective tissue: the dinners, the demo nights, the Saturday coffee where two people decide to build something. Most of us are too busy to get to San Francisco more than once or twice a month, so we are going to make the thing we want to attend.
South Bay Renaissance is a centralized structure for tech, startup and social activity across the South Bay and Peninsula. One shared calendar. One pool of venues, volunteers and sponsors. One community that anyone can host inside. Where there is clear demand and nobody running it, SBR goes and recruits the hosts to fill the gap.
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The post that started it
It's time for a South Bay renaissance
— Rajat Suri (@rajatsuri) August 21, 2026
Might be hard to recall, but used to be not that long ago that the center of Silicon Valley was squarely in Palo Alto, not SF. When I came to the Bay in 2010, that's where I lived and that's where I stayed and settled down to build my startups
It's a beautiful place to live, maybe the best weather in the world, teeming with top talent, safe and family friendly.... but the locus of tech has moved to SF., leaving the startup scene down here somewhat bare and deprived.
I'm committed to revitalizing the South Bay for startups, with events, dinners, social activities (incl parent/kids activities), etc. We can build a vibrant hub down here if a few of us make it happen.
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