If you can get shit done, you can get shit done.

If you're in technology, there is nowhere else in the world to be. Period. The critical mass of talent, investment and employment opportunity mean that - if you're the kind of person who already has the skills and circumstance to be able to make something out of nothing - you can thrive here like nowhere else in the world.

For years, working on Elgg, potential investors would tell us, "move to San Francisco". Our advisors told us that. Some of our customers told us that. And we didn't listen, because we believed that we should be able to create the same kind of opportunity elsewhere.

You can create opportunity elsewhere, but San Francisco is a special kind of place. Need to talk to the person who created product or technology X and get their advice? You can have a coffee with them, almost guaranteed. Need to learn about a product, or get investment feedback, or find top-tier developers? This is the place to be. In other words, if you're here to make money, be surrounded in technology and other smart people, and create something quickly, you're golden.

It's not for everyone, and probably not forever, but it has its place, and I'm not unaware that being here is a privilege all on its own.

The fact that it's beautiful, the weather is pretty good, you're less than an hour away from incredible national parks and world-beating wine country, and it's highly connected with the rest of the world doesn't hurt either.

But more: there's a buzz in the streets, the restaurants all serve amazing food, there's music from every bar doorway and little snippets of culture and history around every corner. I work on the edge of Chinatown, and walk to get coffee past Francis Ford Coppola's restaurant on the edge of North Beach. The echoes of beat poets still hang in the air. Every house is an individual, and the stores are idiosyncratic and independent.

These things are what made San Francisco appealing in the first place, and it's these things that I'm worried will be lost.