Flowers and Garlands to Foster City

Replit CEO Amjad Masad at Qatar tech conference.

Another tech company flees San Francisco not for Austin, Tennessee, or Florida, but to Foster City(!): [bold added]

Amjad Masad, the founder and CEO of Replit, an artificial intelligence company in the Bay Area valued at over $1 billion, announced this week that the company has relocated its headquarters from San Francisco to Foster City.

The move was motivated by a desire for a more “livable” city and to establish a new home base for the AI coding startup, akin to how Google is associated with Mountain View and Apple with Cupertino.

“The ‘why’ we’re leaving is boring, sad, and predictable (crime, dysfunction, etc), so instead let me tell you why we chose Foster City,” Madad wrote in a thread on Twitter explaining his decision to move the company. “Foster City embodies the American postwar optimism and the long-lost California pro-growth mentality"...

Masad, who has previously criticized the living conditions in San Francisco, lauded Foster City for its innovative civic engineering and its origins as a master-planned community. He highlighted its lagoon system, designed to combat sea level rise.

He also noted that the tech-infused community of over 30,000 residents is “relatively affordable” compared to the rest of the Bay Area and a “fun place to live or hang out.”

“The city is super livable,” Masad said. “When Haya and I moved to California, we first took residence there and, in fact, incorporated Replit here. Our first bank was Wells Fargo, a few steps from our new office.”

In response to a follower’s comment about Foster City being quieter than the bustling city, Masad saw this as a benefit.

“Quiet is good,” he replied. “That’s why Silicon Valley worked — the most fun thing to do is build computers and software.”

My personal observation is that homes in Foster City are roughly as expensive as San Francisco, and buildable land is almost non-existent. If Replit workers couldn't afford to live in SF, they probably couldn't afford Foster City either.

Rush hour traffic will be worse as Replit workers commute to their homes, but the working environment will be better with no homeless encampments and worries about smashed-in cars. The variety of restaurants is much better than even 10 years ago if one counts nearby San Mateo, and if one likes working in a racially diverse community, Foster City is 30% Asian.

The CEO of Replit couldn't have done a better job if he worked for Foster City's PR department.