San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie wants to bring his city back to glory. And he is confident that he can help him offer a tech leader who can often sell his ideals.
“I’m the mayor who picks up calls and calls the CEO,” said Lurie at TechCrunch’s StrictlyVC event Thursday night. “I’m calling entrepreneurs and saying, ‘How can I keep you here?’ Or, “How can I get you back?”
He said the first step to attracting these people is to tackle the ramp-stopping drugs and the homeless crisis that has driven many business leaders out of the city. Lurie spends much of his first 100 days in the office, walking through the city’s most problematic areas. This week he rolled back a longtime program in which San Francisco gave away free pipes, foils and straws that were used to ingest drugs such as fentanyl.
Lurie’s “common sense policy” is largely defended by technology leaders, as he called them in the 2024 mayoral campaign. He cried to Lurie as Flexport CEO Ryan Peterson left the stage on StrictlyVC.
“Thank you for cleaning up the city a little.”
Beyond the public safety initiative, Lurie stressed the need to make it easier to “build” in San Francisco. It refers to the construction of a home and the creation of a business.
The city recently announced a new initiative to allow sci-fi. This will help startups reduce the amount of red tape that is incredibly large for them to operate in San Francisco.
On Thursday, the mayor also introduced a new zoning proposal that would allow for taller buildings and therefore more housing. If you pass, it could be San Francisco’s first rezoning since 1970.
“I hope entrepreneurs will stay here once they start their business,” Lurie said. “That means streamlining permits and making it easier to start a restaurant, bar or startup.”
“What we need more is that people come together and exist. […] Practical. We lost it here in San Francisco,” Lurie said.
Building an AI hub
As part of that effort, Lurie said she wanted to gain “tax competitiveness” and suggests she would be willing to give tax credits to businesses in the city. The mayor of San Francisco said he is already working with the city’s leading AI companies to build more offices and hold more meetings in the city.
For example, Lurie said he persuaded Databic to hold an AI conference in San Francisco until 2030, instead of moving to Las Vegas as originally planned. Last month, the mayor also attended the ribbon cutting of his new Openai office.
These AI companies could get tax cuts, but the mayor hopes to invest in San Francisco in other ways. Specifically, he hopes Open Eye CEO Sam Altman will invest in the San Francisco arts and culture scene “loud,” “loud,” “loud,” and “loud.”
But not only does Lurie want the tech dollar, he’s following their ideas too. The city recently announced its San Francisco partnership. San Francisco has announced that it is a consortium of business leaders including Atlantic owners and Steve Jobs’ widow Lauren Powell Jobs, renowned Apple designers Johnny Ive and Altman.
Robotaxis in science fiction
However, some San Franciscans are concerned that the tech industry is pushing out other communities. The tensions recently flare up when Waymo tried to obtain permission to map the SFO airport, allowing Robotaxis to take riders to the airport.
Waymo successfully obtained an SFO mapping permit, but came with a strict carve-out to prevent Waymo from moving commercial goods to and from the airport. Thanks to Teamster’s brotherly love, delivery drivers have great power at San Francisco city hall.
Lurie said she considered dealing with the union to complete Waymo’s SFO permit, but made it clear that “Waymo will not go anywhere.”
The mayor said he is confident that self-driving cars are “where the future is ahead” and that he is talking to other businesses about a bigger presence in the city. Lurie also did not rule out building urban infrastructure to accommodate more autonomous vehicles.
Much of the tech industry’s innovation has historically happened in Silicon Valley, about 40 miles south of the city, but the AI boom appears to be focused firmly on San Francisco. Lurie says it gave the city momentum to really bring innovation back to the city.
“When we’re done, everyone will be like, ‘I could be in San Francisco, otherwise I’d missed it.’ That’s where we go,” Lurie said.
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