Many years ago, a fellow Austrian student tried to find a job in Silicon Valley. He sent all his application letters to various recruiters and HR departments, all without success. Even then, in the early 1990s, the region between San Francisco and San Jose had that magical aura. Only back then, the companies were called Atari and General Magic, today they are Google, Apple or Tesla.

Nothing has changed in the attraction of Silicon Valley and I’m always chatting with start-up founders and other highly motivated people about how to get to Silicon Valley. Here is an overview of approaches that I recommend. Which one to choose always depends on your personal situation.

Before taking the big jump, grabbing your bags, packing your luggage, and transplanting over, I recommend taking some time off and coming here for a period of one to three months and immerse yourself in the ecosystem. With a regular tourist visa, as it is possible between EU and USA, you can stay for 90 days (please always consult the current visa agreements from your country of origin).

After these one to three months you always have a much better understanding of what makes Silicon Valley tick, what works and what you can do.

Once you are here, you usually have several concrete questions and problems to solve. Where do I live? How expensive is life here? How do I best get in contact with people?

Housing & Living Costs

The cost of living in the San Francisco Bay Area (as we also call this area here) is very expensive. And when I say very expensive, I mean it. By 2020, a shared room or studio apartment in San Francisco will easily cost $3,500 to $4,500, and the comfort and standard of living is rarely comparable to that in Europe. Here, one clearly pays for the fact of living in Silicon Valley.

There are cheaper options in the East Bay between Berkeley and Milpitas with Fremont and Oakland in between. But: strictly speaking, this is not part of Silicon Valley, you are far away from the actual action (where you meet people at exciting events), and you’d need a car. Cheap living becomes equally expensive, but with the disadvantage of being stuck in the terrible traffic in the whole Bay Area.

Shared rooms or apartments are usually not even offered for monthly rentals, there are then Airbnb, Couchsurfing or such short-term founder-oriented accommodations, so-called co-living spaces such as Bed|n|Build.

Such co-living spaces, but also a room in a shared flat or Airbnb, have the advantage of being able to get in contact with other people quickly.

Another possibility is to buy an old RV at a reasonable price, park it in a legal place and live in it. I know at least one German start-up and several Google employees who actually do this.

It might also make sense to change accommodation during the duration of your stay. For example two weeks in San Francisco, and two weeks in the Bay Area around Palo Alto. This will give you a better impression of life in the Bay Area and the differences in the contacts and companies you meet. They are bigger than you might think.

Working & Contact

A good way to get in contact with many people quickly is to rent one or more co-working spaces for a few days. In Silicon Valley there are at least 80 of them, all with different offers and focuses. One of the best known is certainly the WeWork network, but also the GSV Lab and similar.

Not only do you meet a lot of other founders in the coffee corners, lounges and common tables, but also at the numerous events and often free courses, which are often offered by your individual start-ups for their “Co-Workers” – the other start-ups.

Once you have made contact in this way, it often happens very quickly that you hear about other events and parties, to which you are simply taken along and taken along.

The people in Silicon Valley all face a similar situation: nobody is from here, everyone is looking for contacts. No matter if the people are from Romania, India, Brazil or Germany, everybody is looking for and helping. Networking here is very easy.

Another way to quickly dive into topics and get to know people is through Meetups. These usually take place in the evenings and there are several of them per week on each topic. You can easily go to two Meetups a day if you want to learn and network. Just enter Palo Alto as the center of the search and then a 60 mile radius on the website itself and you can see what’s going on. Most meetups are free.

Besides conferences and all kinds of other events, simple meetings in cafés are also very good. There you have more time to get to know each other better and maybe even do something together. Cafés are also another place where you can work very well on your own and still be in company. Joe & The Juice, Starbucks or Peets are some of the well-known chains, all of which have internet and power sockets, and then there are lots of others. All of them have very good internet connections, although not always sockets.

Behavior

For some, the change over to Silicon Valley Mindset is a small hurdle. I always recommend to read my book (in German) in advance. By the way, the book is now also available as a cheap paperback.

The most important thing is to be open, to be helpful and to make contacts, and above all to do this quickly. A LinkedIn account is a prerequisite and it is best to reply to e-mails immediately. Waiting longer than 24 hours to reply is only accepted when you had a very good reason.

Also arrange meetings is very quick and immediate. Not in one or two weeks, but tomorrow right after breakfast. The speed is breathtaking.

Relocation

All the tips described so far will help you to experience Silicon Valley up close and personal and to understand what possibilities there are, what is good for you and how best to move forward.

To move to Silicon Valley for a longer period of time means that you have to take care of work visa, look for an apartment, pay taxes and so on. There is a whole range of visas available, starting from specialist visa (O1), entrepreneur visa for 5 years, work visa H1B, a visa if you have already worked for at least one year with a company that also has branches in the USA and is moving there (L1) or the green card that you win in the green card lottery. For this, however, it is best to consult an appropriate immigration lawyer.

This article was also published in German.