‘Best of both worlds’: Community base for Seattle founders expands to San Francisco
Foundations, a Seattle-based startup accelerator and co-working space, is opening a new location in San Francisco – expanding its footprint beyond the Pacific Northwest for the first time.
The expansion isn’t about leaving Seattle so much as it is about helping Seattle founders succeed, said Aviel Ginzburg, a venture capitalist who founded the 2024 Foundations. Ginzburg said the goal is to support Seattle-based companies that split time between the two tech hubs, rather than hiring Bay Area startups.
“It’s about giving our community the best of both worlds,” he wrote in a blog post. “No more choosing sides; we’re bridging the gap to empower innovators wherever their journey takes them.”
The new San Francisco office, expected to open in the second quarter, is about 5,000 square feet — about the same size as Seattle Foundations’ Capitol Hill location. Foundations members will be able to use both the Seattle and San Francisco spaces.
Ginzburg planned the move as a response to market volatility, with strong startup momentum in the Bay Area and growing barriers for Seattle-based founders, particularly related to employment.
Last week GeekWire reported on Seattle-based entrepreneurs moving to San Francisco, drawn by the city’s AI and the edgy camaraderie that’s hard to find in Seattle.
Ginzburg said one or two of the Foundations’ member companies move to San Francisco every month, and the Seattle-based teams spend a lot of time in the Bay Area.
“Seattle remains an amazing place for deep tech work, with its depth of engineering and quality of life, but SF’s density of ambition, AI development, and investor networks is unmatched, and the divide is widening,” Ginzburg wrote.
He told GeekWire that the move was not motivated by tax or political issues, but he acknowledged that the proposed legislation in Olympia — including bills that would tax the income of qualified small businesses — “will improve it.”
Ginzburg, a general partner at Seattle venture firm Founders’ Co-op, noted that San Francisco is not without its barriers to founders. “By expanding the bases in SF, we are killing false choice,” he wrote in a blog post. “Our members have access to both ecosystems without giving up their hard-earned work: Seattle-based talent AND the electric pace of the Bay Area.”
He said Foundations is revising its mission from “making Seattle a better place to be a founder” to “enabling Seattle founders to succeed” — regardless of their physical location.
Other Seattle-based startup groups have made similar moves in recent years. Long-time VC firm Madrona opened a Silicon Valley office in 2022. Matt McIlwain, managing director at Madrona, told GeekWire last year that being in Silicon Valley “gives us a flow of information, other people’s flows that are very relevant to what we’re doing here.”
Flying Fish, another venture capital firm, is also expanding its operations beyond the Pacific Northwest in 2022.
Foundations founder Tyler Brown is already based in San Francisco to help manage the new office. Ginzburg said he will make another trip to the Bay Area.
Meanwhile, Foundations is adding another 5,000 square feet to Seattle’s Capitol Hill location. The Eastside expansion plan has been delayed.
Launched two years ago as a way to support early stage founders, the foundation fills the gap left by the departure of Techstars Seattle. The group now has 290 active members, and has worked closely with 68 residential founders who have participated in the accelerator program and collectively raised more than $70 million. Ginzburg recently brought in Seattle investor Peter Mueller to help run operations.
Institutions operate as a for-profit organization, a legal distinction designed for businesses that want to make a profit and prioritize the good of society and society. The organization developed its business model to be able to fund operations without requiring an equity exchange with participating entrepreneurs.
It is one of the few startup groups in the Seattle region that aims to help innovators, including the AI2 Incubator and its AI House, Pioneer Square Labs, Plug and Play, and a few others.
