The new Oakland shuttle just pulled up at the stop by my office. Pretty darn convenient. Only had to wait about 5 minutes (it runs every 10 minutes or so during peak hours and 15 minutes every other time). As you can see, it looks like a standard bus and is serviced by AC Transit. Hopefully this catches on and serves its purpose of spurring more business in Downtown Oakland. Otherwise it'll be a pretty short lived experiment.

This is great news. The current issue with Downtown Oakland is that there are pockets of cool places but they aren't necessarily next to each other. Jack London Square (where Centrro resides) is up and coming while the Uptown area has its own bustling restaurant/bar scene. The free shuttle that will run up and down Broadway from JLS to Uptown (and all points in between) will help get more cross pollination of people between these two areas. Plus, it'll be a great way to move people from BART to their respective destinations. I'm toying with the idea of walking from my place in Rockridge down to Uptown and taking the shuttle the rest of the way to JLS. Would be a great way to exercise and save on gas/pollution/etc.

I may be biased because I live here but I don't know why more tech entrepreneurs don't view Oakland as a viable place to build their start-ups. It's centrally located, close to public transportation, and real estate (both commercial and residential) is less expensive than the usual start-up hotspots of San Francisco or Silicon Valley. Not to mention the fact that a lot of folks who work at tech start-ups live in the East Bay and have long commutes. I've done the East Bay to SF/SV commute before and it used to take me 45-90 minutes one way each day to get to work. Compare that to my current 10-15 minute ROUNDTRIP commute and it's a no brainer. What could you do with an extra 2-3 hours every day? Over the course of a work year (about 250 days), that's almost a full month you've wasted on the road.

Granted, Oakland has its fair share of issues. The one that usually comes up is that Oakland is perceived to be a crime-ridden city. Sure, there's crime here but like any large city there are areas where crime is high and others where it is not. I don't propose you bring your tech start-up and plop it down on Seminary and International just like I wouldn't make the Tenderloin or Hunters Point my company HQ. My first company was in what's now known as the Uptown area of Oakland, home to such little known start-ups like Pandora. We currently reside in the Jack London Square area which recently brought in Sungevity, a solar start-up.

Getting to the point of this post, I'm trying to cobble together some tech start-ups who are looking for office space in the Jack London Square area. The building we're in is newly renovated and very well maintained. We occupy a small suite but are getting to the point where we are considering more space. Conveniently, there is a larger suite across the hall that's been decked to the halls with all the latest goodies (professional cubes, CAT 6 cabling, etc). Only catch is that it's huge and much larger than we can take at this time. My grand idea is to have an informal tech cluster sharing this space. A few start-ups working in close proximity to each other, sharing ideas, mingling, etc. Plus we would offer the flexibility that a standard lease would not have - month to month, taking more space, taking less space. So if anyone out there is interested, drop me a line. Even if you're not interested, drop me a line anyway. I'm always glad to meet new entrepreneurs and share ideas.