San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie needs to carry his metropolis again to its glory days. And he’s satisfied tech leaders — who usually pitch utopian beliefs of their very own — may help him ship.
“I’m a mayor that is picking up the phone and calling CEOs,” stated Lurie throughout TechCrunch’s StrictlyVC occasion on Thursday night time. “I’m calling entrepreneurs and saying, ‘How can we keep you here?’ or ‘How can we get you back?’”
The first step to successful these of us again, he stated, is addressing a rampant drug and homelessness disaster that’s pushed many enterprise leaders out of town. Lurie has spent a lot of his first 100 days in workplace strolling town’s most troubled neighborhoods. This week, he rolled again a longstanding program wherein San Francisco handed out free pipes, foil, and straws that had been used to ingest medication, resembling fentanyl.
Lurie’s “common sense policies,” as he known as them throughout his 2024 mayoral marketing campaign, are largely being championed by know-how leaders. As Ryan Peterson, the CEO of Flexport, walked off the stage at StrictlyVC whereas the San Francisco Mayor walked on, he yelled to Lurie:
“Thanks for cleaning up the city a bit.”
Beyond the general public security initiative, Lurie emphasised the necessity to make it simpler to “build” in San Francisco — referring to development of homes and creation of companies.
The metropolis lately unveiled a brand new initiative, Permit SF, which would scale back the quantity of crimson tape that startups should wade by way of to function in San Francisco.
On Thursday, the mayor additionally launched a brand new zoning proposal that might permit taller buildings — and thus, extra housing — in neighborhoods that historically have solely allowed decrease, single household houses. If handed, it may very well be the primary rezoning of San Francisco since 1970.
“We want our entrepreneurs starting businesses and then staying here,” stated Lurie. “That means streamlining permitting, making it easier to start a restaurant, a bar, or a startup.”
“What we need more of is people coming together and being […] practical. We sort of lost that here in San Francisco,” stated Lurie. “I believe the business community that has stayed here, that did not leave, understands our values, and we’re going to attract businesses back in the coming years.”
Building an AI Hub
As a part of that effort, Lurie stated he needs to get “competitive on the tax front,” suggesting he’s keen to present tax breaks to corporations within the metropolis. The San Francisco mayor stated he’s already labored with town’s main AI corporations to construct extra places of work and maintain extra conferences within the metropolis.
For instance, Lurie stated he satisfied Databricks to carry its AI convention in San Francisco by way of 2030, as a substitute of transferring to Las Vegas as the corporate initially deliberate. Last month, the mayor additionally attended the ribbon slicing for a brand new OpenAI workplace.
While these AI corporations might get tax cuts, the mayor needs them to put money into San Francisco in different methods. Specifically, he needs OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to “get loud about” their investments in San Francisco’s arts and tradition scenes, which he says the corporate has already been doing quietly.
But Lurie doesn’t simply need the tech business’s {dollars}, he’s after their concepts as properly. The metropolis lately introduced the Partnership for San Francisco — a consortium of enterprise leaders, together with The Atlantic proprietor and Steve Jobs widow Laurene Powell Jobs, famed Apple designer Jony Ive, and Altman — to assist in giving companies a transparent channel to speak with metropolis corridor.
Robotaxis in SF
But some San Franciscans are involved the tech business is pushing out different communities. That rigidity lately flared up when Waymo tried acquiring a allow to map out the SFO airport, permitting its robotaxis to take riders to and from the airport.
Waymo efficiently obtained an SFO mapping allow, nevertheless it got here with a strict carveout to make sure Waymo wouldn’t transfer business items to and…
