“Winter is coming,” says Russell Hancock, chief of think tank Joint Venture Silicon Valley. “The markets don’t lie.”
Hancock, who knows Silicon Valley like the back of his hand, might be spot on. House sales in San Jose have soared by 131 per cent, the highest rate in America, according to 2019 figures from real-estate giant Redfin.
Rising living costs, a growing homelessness crisis, Donald Trump and a sense of crisis at some of Silicon Valley’s most successful companies is driving a wave of departures from San Francisco. The Bay Area has been the thriving home of the world’s most famous tech hubs for decades, witnessing the dotcom boom and bust and the flood of workers looking to make their fortunes at Facebook, Apple, Netflix and Google while incubating a side-project a venture capitalist might take a gamble on.