to introduce this illustrates how, please welcome the ceo of our nation s second-largest green builder, a member of the silicon valley leadership group border directors, and the ceo of webcor builders andy ball. thank you [applause] thank you. [applause] welcome back to our third session. i hope you enjoy the first two as much as i did. i think we found out how much of a character governor brown can be we are going to talk about silicon valley and the bay area innovation to the economy today. as you look at the panel, talking about the silicon valley, we have the mayor of san francisco. it will come into perspective, that when you have a giant like ibm anchor here in the valley, you are seeing in between companies like google and apple and facebook with incredible growth. in san francisco, mayor lee has welcomed to the fold in twitter, zynga, companies that are into cloud computing, hiring lots of people that not only want to live and work in the valley but recognize s
i know the relationship with san francisco, the valley, san jose, is extremely important. i wanted to be down here to join these electors panel of guests as well. the payroll tax in san francisco had been one i was here about a year ago explaining twitter. as everybody knows, they were not only threatening, they were planning to leave the city of san francisco. they had already identified a building. they said, we are about to grow to about 2000 employees and we are quick to get taxed for that. we think that is not going to be our business model. so we fought through it, david chiu, jane kim and i, we started to discuss with them, met with them. the key thing was job growth for our city, coming out of the economic challenges. so we started a good conversation, started the central market tax exemption. we got something out of it, which was to potentially relocate. they responded by signing the lease and we gave them a six- year exemption. we also said that we would have dial
people that not only want to live and work in the valley but recognize san francisco as being part of the valley. we are, indeed, fortunate, from san jose to san francisco, to be part of the innovation economy. we are finally seeing once again california s innovation is leading us out of the last three years of recession. i do not know about you but i am pretty tired of the recession. i made a statement several years ago that it was about time for an adjustment to the economy, things were too expensive, overheated. two years after that, i regretted making that comment. it was great to hear jim say when you look at education, you look at the programs, traveling around the world, that there is one constant. there are people and technology that say this is a place they want to be. entrepreneurs say this is where they want to be. when companies like facebook are started at an institution like harvard and a pier, you start to recognize why this is so special and fiber and why inno
hiring and training local 7 siskins to get into the workforce. as andy is saying, that has caused other industries, particularly the construction industry, to get revitalized immediately. you have heard sales force had 18 acres in mission bay. they got excited about just being downtown, so they went ahead and did 400,000 square feet, now looking at an even larger space to continue their growth downtown. i want to direct this next question to you, lisa. every company in the valley, no matter how it is defined in terms of geography, has been a start up at some point. where did the idea for great products and services come from? thank you very much for allowing me to be here to address you today. that is a great question. i want to start by thanking the city of san francisco for being a part of an incubator that we are a part of, the kiwi3 innovation center. it is located in san francisco next to the ucsf mission building. there are lots of biotechnology laboratories availab
commerce, the wonderful group we have worked with for many years, but why not also have an additional voice? so we formed sf city, a citizen s initiative for technology and innovation, which was aimed at the new developing companies to give us a constant dialogue about their ongoing needs. anything we have done is they have also embraced the needs of our city. it is a two-way conversation. that led to us revising our stock options. we were one of the few cities in the country that was taxing stock options. again, not understanding how the ipo was working for the startup companies, realizing that we would be punishing them for their growth and turnaround, so we gave them another six-year exemption on that. by the way, if we grow, if we sustain and assist you in growing, can you help us with job training? that is what started the conversation on sf city. they have an ongoing program to create the curriculum for hiring kids or our public schools and aimed at returning veterans,