Now that I'm back to Portugal/Europe from a few days in the US, here are a few notes about what got my attention the most in San Francisco: Culture, Places, Infrastructure • The homelessness problem still strikes me. Areas like Embarcadero & Financial District are just fine, but City Center / Union Square and Soma are... scary. • There's a discrepancy on the walking culture around the city. No one wants to walk around Union Square. Embarcadero has excellent walking (and running) culture. I suspect that's due to the homelessness problem and the drugs. No one wants to be around other citizens who are acting weird or simply on drugs, out of fear (myself included). • Public transports are actually better compared to the last time I visited in 2019. Better vibes in general. • First time I’ve been to various neighbours and the architecture in SF is generally beautiful. The mix of brutalism architecture with modern around Embarcadero and Financial District is surprisingly interesting. Hayes Valley and Golden Park surroundings feel walkable and beautiful. I still feel like the architecture is way inferior to most European cities I visited. • Less people wearing AirPods in the street compared to 2019. • Incredible running culture near the shore. People run so fast though, I question if people are getting an unusual amount of injuries. Everyone seems to be running close to threshold, aside from a few that look like very frequent runners. • The % of healthy people compared to last time I visited (2019) seems to so much higher. Very common to see people talk about health. Meetups and events catching up with the trend, serving healthy food. There’s no longer a “let's just eat pizza" culture. People • You can easily run into interesting people by simply staying in the city. Ran into @garrytan while running. Found a couple entrepreneurs talking about AI transformation of their teams while in line for coffee. • The density of ambitious people is incredibly high. You can see that by the number of events, and how many people attend them. You can almost attend one event a day, and every single one of them end up having a waiting list. • There's a genuine willingness of people to talk about what they’re doing and aiming to do. Very transparent. I wonder if this is due to the fact that everyone understand that everyone's figuring it out. • Most people seem excited about what they’re working on, and when not excited, are 100% willing to leave and join a different company asap. Maybe this is a positive effect of being around ambitious people, who are by default optimistic. • Heard very little about job displacement, even though I heard multiple times people talking about the risks of AI for society. Almost as if the risks of AI are abstract and more global (i.e. macro-economic, society-level unemployment) and not focused on each individual, who is excited about what’s coming and opportunities it will generate (i.e micro-economic, individual-level opportunities). • Americans are so good selling themselves. Heard a leader talking about how speed is the moat, everyone does everyone’s jobs, how production problems are expected to happen and it's normal as long as they can fix quickly, and how no swim lanes / process is the go-to, and I could only think of: “this must be so chaotic”. Speaking to other folks, they also thought the same, but for a moment I doubted myself. This was being said with such conviction, that it almost seemed the way to go. Is storytelling something these people learn at school? Because it really feels like it's built into society. • The willingness to think big and years ahead is incredible. Most founders I spoke with that are just getting started, think their products are ahead of time, and think they’re will be massive in… years from now. They are not concerned about current lack of traction as long as they see signs of growth (sometimes coming from 1 conversation they had with a potential customer!). • Many people feel a fatigue for AI sloop and AI average results. People no longer care about reading something that was read by AI (so easy to identify), and people don’t even care to watch pages that are “Claude-designed”. • People are craving IRL like I’ve never seen before. So much willingness to connect, have conversations, and leave the phone aside. It was great to see so many people together, and such a low % of people on their phones. They are extremely bullish and enthusiastic about tech though. It’s not that they’re tired of tech, but they’re tired of having no meaningful human connection. Events • Most people attend events by themselves, not going with coworkers or people they know. As a result, they are also much more willing to find new people to chat with. It's so easy to find someone to talk with. Everyone's looking for someone to chat with! • Conversations start with “What’s your name and what do you do?” and remain work-related (most times). People have no problems kindly moving away from a conversation to talk to someone else with similar roles/challenges. • Events get sold out quickly. Talked to a meet-up organiser who expected 15 people to attend, and then had 150 people asking to come (brunch after @lennysan). Most events go into waitlist.