California

“Only about a third of our investing has been in California. A third has been in, in Colorado, and a third has been spread really across the rest of the US which is our investment, you know, target market, the full US market.”

“Say a year ago, we surpassed a million hours of home care in California, and we were operating on much thinner margins, a lower cost.”

“The first year of Oscar was really mostly spent getting a license, and we ended up being the first newly licensed commercial health insurance company in New York State in about 20 years, and California later on about 25 years or so.”

“Today, Sequoia, and many of the other venture firms, they invest more money outside of California than inside of it”

“In the United States last year, according to the NVCA that tracks us, 75% of venture capital went to three states. You know, California, New York, and Massachusetts, 50%. Half of America's venture capital went to one state. California.”

“And then I came up to California to see what was happening in California this about 2004, and I decided if I was going to be in venture, I needed to do it in California. So I came up here without a job, and my kids were in school, so I'd fly up every Sunday ni…”

“The cost structure in California has got to such a point that it's very hard to build a business because when you map the money flows, you can basically see the money flowing from LPs to landlords because you have to pay new grants so much more because their c…”

“There's a reason startups aren't staying. There's a reason that people are fleeing. That's because of San Francisco and frankly, all of California, you can only tax people so much. And then eventually they're just like, gosh, every dollar I'm making, I take ho…”

“I do think San Francisco is going to take a really big hit. San Francisco in particular, maybe California more broadly, but San Francisco in particular is going to take a huge hit.”

“If you look at capital gains tax rates, effective capital gains tax rates, You create your unicorn, good for you, right, and you're going to make a lot of cash. You'll probably pay 20% capital gains tax rates in the UK on all of that. In France, when all is sa…”

“Up until COVID, you know, we would actually, no matter where the person was hired, they could be in Australia, we would send them to California for one week of training.”

“Jim Schwartz told us in the summer of 2011 that if we didn't open a presence in California because we were only in Boston, we would never survive as a firm.”

“You'll probably pay 20% capital gains tax rates in the UK on all of that. In France, when all is said and done, you're probably paying closer to 30. And in California, which we all love and celebrate, you're probably paying close to the 37, right, when you add…”

“I feel like it's the only place I can live and do what I want to do in the way that I want to do it.”

“So what we had to do is we actually went out and we personally bought a financial institution. We bought an OCC regulated bank out here in California.”

“And you know, it basically saved the state a billion dollars over the next decade. It sent tens of thousands of fewer people back to stay at prison.”

“And with DoorDash being the, clearly the market leader in most of the U.S., but not in California and certain regions that That are very attractive. Where we were the number one.”

“The highest concentration of talent working on what I think is going to be the next generation of problems That the world faces and the next generation of kind of generational segment defining companies. A lot of them are in California, man.”

“Duolingo does not have an office in Silicon Valley or anywhere in California”

“It's a great place to live. So I'm genuine, genuine comment, not, you know, I wish it were lower, but tax is not the reason to leave California.”

“The answer is the ones that almost won in 2020 and 20 21. It's that simple because there wasn't enough gravity to get people to go to Miami outside of, you know, some hedge funds and others, and there wasn't enough gravity to go to Austin because it's really n…”

“I worry that the, that it just makes sense to leave after the Series B. You should just leave. And I don't, I, and I think YC will get their seven percent, and the funds will still stay, but you'll just leave.”

“So are you going to sit in California? If you're worth two billion dollars and say to yourself, I'm going to give a billion dollars for the privilege of living here. I don't think so. You're going to leave. So I think it's going to be fairly pernicious to what…”

“And so, I do think if this goes as far as the folks that have Backing at want, you could have a Detroit in the Silicon Valley. Like, when it becomes a meme to do YC, or to do South Park Common, but then build, you know, get your money, build your team, and the…”

“All wealth taxes underperform what the people project they'll raise because it tends to be very mobile and it's, it does, it's very hard to tax that and people can move.”

“I really don't think adding QSBS to New York is going to lead to the exodus that the people wanted to do. We can talk about why, but they did it in California and that alone didn't work.”

“And the tax itself assumed massive amounts from Larry Ellison, who's been gone a half decade, right?”

“I think the California will pass its billionaire tax and the Exodus will continue.”

“As it's becoming painfully clear now, no one in America other than us here in California likes the AI trend.”

“California didn't just outperform everywhere else. It got three quarters of the total dollars. Now, that's invention. That's skewed by the fact that Entropic and OpenAI together got probably 60% of the total dollars.”