Stop Being a Tourist

Why compound advantages belong to those who stay

Every group chat: "Anyone know a recruiter?" "Need a 2BR ASAP?" "Is SOMA safe now?"

Founders from New York, Europe, India. All here for AI. The same people who declared SF dead two years ago.

I tracked every founder who left. Forty-seven fled to "no tax states" during COVID. Forty-four are back. They're all here for AI. And they can't build anything because everyone's here for AI.

That's the thing with gold rushes. The rush destroys the gold.

Thirteen years in SF taught me one thing: compound advantages only work if you stick around. Through Uber for X. Through crypto winter. Through COVID. Tourists chase cycles. Locals build through them.

You spot tourists instantly. Twenty coffee meetings their first week. Month-to-month rentals at double the price. Creating the exact bidding war they're losing. Asking if SF is "safe" again, as if crime was why they left.

Everyone claims they're missionaries, not mercenaries. But missionaries don't flee when offerings dry up.

Locals play different games. They know overnight success takes seven years minimum. They know which engineers survived 2022. They committed when everyone called them stupid.

Yes, experiment. Try things. Fail fast. But experimenting differs from being a perpetual tourist. Pivoting differs from never staying long enough for anything to compound.

SF's dysfunction is the feature. High costs force commitment. You don't accidentally end up here.

With two kids, I run the spreadsheets. The Austin mansion with a pool. The Miami beachfront. The Phoenix compound. All affordable on my SF rent.

But math doesn't explain why they all came crawling back.

They saved 13% and lost their edge: the network, the collisions, ten thousand builders within three miles. You can't Zoom serendipity. The engineer who trusts you because you survived three cycles together won't take your call from Miami.

Capital isn't destiny. Neither is tax optimization. The smartest people I knew did everything right on paper. Now bidding against forty other returnees for engineers they could've kept.

Real building happens when tourists leave. No noise. No bidding wars. The 2001 crash gave us Google. 2008 gave us Uber. 2022's exodus? The builders who stayed are about to show you.

The founders worth backing aren't at SF Tech Week. They signed three-year commitments when everyone fled. Half the burn rate, twice the focus.

Stop optimizing for comfort. Optimize for compound returns.

Every bust, the same people leave. Every boom, they return, paying double for half the opportunity.

That Austin mansion is always there. This moment, when overnight successes grind through year four unnoticed, isn't.

Here's what tourists never learn: cycles keep coming. AI will cool. Something else will heat up. The city will empty and fill. Empty and fill. The opportunity lies in the pattern itself.

Build through the bust. Hire when everyone's gone. Compounding advantages belong to whoever's still here when tourists return.

They always return.

And when they do, you'll own what they're desperately trying to buy.