In Palo Alto, Google & Apple Would Have Been Evicted From Their First Garage Offices

Just two guys. In a garage. Making a job-creating juggernaut.

It’s widely known that two of the world’s most valuable companies had their first offices in garages rented from friend’s homes in the Bay Area. Seriously, read this wonderful article about Google’s first garage office — it’s the dream! Unfortunately, if those companies were to start today in Palo Alto (the heart of Silicon Valley), they would probably be evicted.

Below is one of the many letters going out to homes in Palo Alto.

These letters have supposedly increased since the more anti-development council was voted in.

These rules/regulations are particularly strict because:

• no more than 25% of your house can be used for your home office,
• you can’t have people working in your home office that don’t live there, and
• the enforcement is stiff at $200-$400 PER SUBSECTION PER DAY.

Yeah, Google and Apple would have been evicted had they started now.

If office space were cheaper than the outrageous price per square foot in Palo Alto, I’m sure startups would gladly pay the price. These letters and the high cost of commercial housing have a chilling effect on startups who are part of the engine that makes Silicon Valley great. I’ve heard a VC was told to shut down their home office because meetings with outside strangers weren’t permitted. In another story, startups are living in fear that they have some crazed neighbor who wants to kick them out.

In an ironic twist of fate, tech gets blamed for evictions in the bay area, but tech itself is being evicted too.

For many startups, they can’t afford an expensive office in the center of Palo Alto, but early founders/startup employees are caught with skyrocketing home rents as well. It only makes natural sense that they’d want to combine their living spaces with their office too. In fact, a lot of home businesses across the United States do exactly that, not just startups.

Now, commercial offices could charge below-market rates, but that would decrease any incentive for office space, which would exacerbate the problem. Or another solution might be residential rents could go down. Perhaps an early team doesn’t have to shell out so much for residential rent and they could move that money toward a separate office. Win-Win, right?

Follow the lead of this guy and his cool shoes.

Luckily, we have a vehicle to do JUST THAT. Support the Budget Trailer Bill, which has a vote on June 15, and follow Sam Altman’s steps to help fast-track residential housing in the bay area. It only takes a few minutes to call and would mean a lot for this piece of legislation which would really help provide more affordable housing for everyone.

This piece of legislation will likely have a very large impact to decreasing the exorbitant rents in the bay area and DIRECTLY affects the most fragile of startups when they’re first starting.

Now, I could be wrong and the connection is tenuous. In which case, you’ve read this article thus far anyway, so you should just call and help make residential housing more affordable anyway, which is still good for the next Apple/Google founders and their employees.

Help protect the next Apple or Google in whatever garage office they might have.

The Apple Garage (as depicted in the movie The Pirates of Silicon Valley)

Oh, and according to my friends, this is the subject of an episode of Silicon Valley. Sometimes truth can be stranger than fiction.

Technically, he’d still be evicted.