San Francisco
San Francisco rooftop, Bay Area
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| City details | |
| State | California, USA |
| Population | ~870,000 |
| Area | 49 sq miles (7×7 peninsula) |
| Jack’s base | Oakland, CA (adjacent) |
| Jack’s connections | |
| Hacker house | Q House 2023 |
| School | UCSC (nearby) |
| Hackathon | Berkeley AI Hackathon 2024 |
San Francisco is a 49-square-mile peninsula on the western edge of North America, home to approximately 870,000 people, and the symbolic center of the global technology industry. Jack is based in Oakland — directly across the Bay, 15 minutes by BART — and the SF/Oakland area is his primary operational base.
Geography and Neighborhoods
San Francisco’s hills create its character. The bay on the east, the Pacific on the west, fog rolling in through the Golden Gate every afternoon.
SoMa — The tech industry’s original home. Salesforce Tower, startups stacked in converted warehouses. Uber and Airbnb are here.
Mission District — Best taquerias in the city. Dolores Park. The 24th Street murals. Heavily gentrified but still has the best food.
Haight-Ashbury — Where the Summer of Love happened in 1967. Now vintage shops and tourists, but the Victorians are intact.
North Beach — Italian-American neighborhood. City Lights Books (Beat Generation). Caffè Trieste, since 1956.
Tech Culture
San Francisco’s concentration of founders, engineers, and capital creates compounding returns that pulled more of all three in. The same dynamic that creates financial centers creates tech centers.
The consequences: median rent among the highest in the world. The city’s failure to build housing at scale is a decades-long policy failure that the tech boom accelerated.
Food and Restaurants
- Mission burritos — La Taqueria, El Farolito, Taqueria Cancun. Massive, foil-wrapped, rice inside.
- Zuni Café — The roast chicken has been on the menu for decades.
- Tartine Bakery — Country sourdough. Lines form before opening.
- Ferry Building Marketplace — Farmers market Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday.
Q House 2023
Jack co-organized Qhouse 2023 in San Francisco in 2023 — a hacker house that produced the Kevin Zhang / Mira connection and proved the live-work density model worked for him as an organizer.
