Real San Francisco Podcast

The Connective Tissue: Vikrum Aiyer on Connection, Community, and San Francisco's Future

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Welcome to The REAL San Francisco Podcast! In this episode, Alexander Fromm Lurie and Baxter Smith sit down with Vikrum Aiyer for a powerful conversation about connection, community, civic leadership, and the future of San Francisco.

From his work in the Obama administration and technology policy to his involvement in San Francisco’s civic and cultural institutions, Vikrum brings a unique perspective on what it takes to build a stronger, more connected city.

This episode explores one of the biggest questions facing San Francisco today: How do we move from a boom-and-bust cycle into a more sustained, inclusive, and thriving future?

Together, Alexander, Baxter, and Vikrum discuss the importance of building “connective tissue” between tech companies, local businesses, nonprofits, cultural institutions, government leaders, and everyday residents. They also dive into the role of AI, downtown recovery, civic pride, the arts, community investment, and why San Francisco’s next chapter depends on all of us choosing to participate.

If you care about the future of San Francisco — whether you live here, work here, invest here, or simply love this city — this episode is a must-watch.

Topics we cover:

Vikrum Aiyer’s journey through government, tech, policy, and civic leadership

Why San Francisco needs more connection across sectors

How tech and AI companies can become better stewards of the city

The role of arts, culture, and civic institutions in San Francisco’s comeback

Why community investment matters for long-term growth

How San Francisco can move beyond the boom-and-bust cycle

What residents, founders, leaders, and everyday citizens can do to support the city’s future

Why San Francisco’s next chapter is about pride, participation, and shared responsibility

Subscribe for more conversations with the people shaping the real San Francisco — from real estate and business to culture, community, technology, and civic life.

Stay informed. Stay connected. Stay Real San Francisco.

#RealSanFrancisco #SanFranciscoPodcast #VikrumAiyer #SanFrancisco #SFCommunity #SanFranciscoRealEstate #BayAreaPodcast #CivicLeadership #SanFranciscoTech #AIinSanFrancisco #SFArts #SanFranciscoFuture

00:00 Opening Teaser
00:38 Welcome to The Real San Francisco Podcast
00:53 Introducing Vikram Iyer
01:13 Building a More Sustainable San Francisco
01:35 Vikram’s Background in Policy, Tech & Civic Leadership
02:31 Why San Francisco Needs More “Connective Tissue”
04:03 From the East Bay to DC and Back to San Francisco
05:12 Why Local Impact Matters
06:19 How Companies Can Be Better Stewards of San Francisco
08:11 Why Employers Must Invest Locally
09:12 Connecting AI, Climate, Talent & Local Institutions
10:36 The Disconnect Between Tech, Arts & Community
12:26 Are Tech Leaders Thinking About Civic Responsibility?
14:07 Why San Francisco Needs a Coordinating Backbone
15:34 The San Francisco Futures Initiative
17:09 Moving Beyond the Boom-and-Bust Cycle
19:00 How Local Investment Creates a More Stable City
20:41 What San Francisco Needs More of Right Now
21:19 The Challenge of Polarization Within the City
23:14 Safety, Schools, Housing & the Need for Dialogue
24:22 Tech, Labor & Cross-Sector Conversations
25:12 Why Cultural Institutions Matter
26:20 The San Francisco Symphony & the Power of Convening
28:12 The Untold Story of San Francisco’s Institutions
29:19 How Everyday San Franciscans Can Invest in the City
30:55 Three Ways to Support San Francisco’s Future
31:28 Bring People Back Into the City
32:21 Becoming Spokespeople for San Francisco’s Story
33:15 Building an Inclusive City
34:16 San Francisco Five to Ten Years From Now
34:32 Rethinking Space, Parks & Downtown
35:48 AI, Capital & Building a Stronger Civic Foundation
36:48 Pride, Stewardship & Giving Back
39:39 How Giving and Micro-Actions Can Help the City
41:57 Civic Pride and Investing in San Francisco’s Future
43:02 Closing Thoughts with Vikram Iyer
43:24 End

SPEAKER_02

And I think that's the real SF story, which is our recovery will be sustained if we build more connective tissue throughout each of these sectors in a way that I think we need to do with more intention in the city and county of San Francisco.

SPEAKER_01

San Francisco has so much to offer and it's accelerating quickly right now.

SPEAKER_03

Our goal is to make the city the best it can be for us and for future generations.

SPEAKER_00

Amplify.

SPEAKER_03

To amplify how incredible and majestic this city is. It's exceptional. It really is. And it's only as good as the people who tend and care for it.

SPEAKER_02

That's right. That's my heuristic. That's my philosophy. And I think if San Francisco does that, we're gonna be a boom, not a bust cycle for a while now.

SPEAKER_01

Welcome to the real San Francisco podcast, where the pulse of the city meets the truth of the market. We go beyond the headlines to bring you stories, data, and insider takes from those who live and breathe the city we love. Ready to get real? Here we go. Welcome to the real San Francisco podcast. Today we have our good friend, client, countryman, Vikram Iyer. Uh Vikram has been uh on a very unique path that we will get into, but let's talk a little bit about what we're gonna get into today.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I mean, the real SF story is one of sustained growth and development. Our city is on the rise. There's very few of us who would disagree. And yet, how do we convert from the boom and bust cycle that we tend to be on into something that is more sustainably up? And that today. That today, gentlemen, is what we are going to talk about. So, Vikram, share a little bit about yourself.

SPEAKER_02

Yep.

SPEAKER_03

Super excited to be here.

SPEAKER_02

Uh, Vikram Eyer grew up in the Bay Area, got a political itch and moved to DC right out of the gates, and kind of thought that that's where I wanted to have change and impact the world. But I think since being back and doing policy work in DC and now doing policy work inside of technology companies here in San Francisco, I realized a lot of the change that I'm hoping to see for myself, for my family, for this current kind of polarized moment, it can and needs to happen at the city level. So I'm really excited to dig into that. By way of background, I have had an opportunity working for civil rights groups like the ACLU, tech companies that you know we use to get, you know, that we use through the powers of our phone, um, and also work for in the Obama administration and other elected officials in DC. I think what all that has taught me is that we can actually find a lot of common ground if you bridge those different sectors and don't just pick your lane and stay in that lane. And I think that's the real SF story, which is our recovery will be sustained if we build more connective tissue throughout each of these sectors, kind of in the way that my career has done, but in a way that I think we need to do with more intention in the city and county of San Francisco.

SPEAKER_03

Absolutely. So, Vikram, you are incredibly humble. Um, 40 named 40 under 40 um by San Francisco Business Times. Um, before working at Postmates and taking them through acquisition, because Uber purchased them and you're the head of policy at Postmates. Um, you had a long career in the Obama administration for about six years where you're focused on innovation policy, um, which is still very much needed in a big conversation because I feel like policy can't keep up with innovation, right? We're like, I feel like our policymakers are chasing, like trying to, it's like I think about AI right now. It's like there's there's no scaffolding around it. And and so they look to people in tech to help inform policy, or at least that's how it should be working. It should be a sort of a public-private relationship. And so I think you saw that, and then you actually came back to San Francisco Bayer and said, I want to be in tech, not just be creating policy outside, so that you're sort of that living expression of what I would love more government officials to be able to do is actually walk the walk, not just sort of, you know, speak and create without sort of that dialogue and experience. Um, and now you're consulting for companies on in a policy capacity. So um we're really fortunate to have you here.

SPEAKER_01

You teed up kind of his background, but maybe a little more detail on where you came from and how you ended up here.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I grew up in the Bay Area, um, East Bay, and I always remember coming into town around the holidays to go uh right downtown, window shopping, would go up to the top floor of that Macy's building and eat at the Cheesecake Factory every week.

SPEAKER_01

I take my kids there in Christmas. We go to the Cheesecake Factory. It's amazing, it's still there.

SPEAKER_02

It's still there. 14 pages of menus, but you know, still meant to cheesecake. A lot of cheesecake. A lot of options. That that visual, though, was very important to me because I I don't think I appreciated it when I left and went to DC, as um as you mentioned, spent a lot of time working in government and kind of thought that was the NBA of my career. That was the higher echelon of what I wanted to work on when it came to impact. I think what I miss then and what I see now being home in San Francisco is that you can work on big sweeping institutional reforms like innovation policy, like trade policy, the kind of stuff that DC is important for, shaping an economy, shaping business appetite and growth. But a lot of the effects that we're trafficking in day to day, your business realizes this, your clients realize this, a lot of the impact happens locally. And when all of a sudden I come back to San Francisco, work at a tech company, and am not just shaping policy for the tech company, which we can get into, but I'm also a resident of the city. When you see traffic flows to that cheesecake factory start to change, or you see the lack of interest from your family members who used to relish coming into town with you to uh for that family ritual, um, actually kind of shrug and say, eh, let's meet somewhere else.

SPEAKER_01

Or maybe that's not And that Cheesecake Factory was gonna go away. It was gonna go away.

SPEAKER_02

The whole thing was gonna go away. It was gonna go away, yeah, absolutely. And case in point. I I think that is sort of what I see the importance of this resurgence of tech in the city being about. Of course, whether you're an AI company, whether you run a uh help run a clean energy company like the one that I'm at now, um, or you're in financial services, or you work for like a more common well-known retailer like Gap or Levi's, there are lots of things you need to do to structure the growth of your business, to be a good employer, expand your revenue, and pay into the tax base. But right now, Baxter, what I think is companies and people who have a policy role inside these companies also have a responsibility to be regenerative about their presence and place in a city like San Francisco, to not just take out, you know, lease down leases downtown to employ people again. But when you think about policy about what you're building, how do we think about what its impacts mean locally in San Francisco? If you're building AI, how do you think about partnering with some of the labor unions in San Francisco to talk about job creation and workforce development? If you're building a clean energy company, how do you think about climate impacts being so close to one of the largest ports in the world, um, the Oakland port and what that means for air quality impacts? And so policy development, particularly in San Francisco right now, has so many through lines to the resurgence and the re-tenaissance that the city is going through that it feels like the responsibility we have is to not just service the company and help grow it as a startup executive, but also think about your surroundings as a neighbor of fellow startups and communities within San Francisco.

SPEAKER_03

It sounds like what you're saying is to be a good business leader, you're not just growing your bottom line or the tech company, but you're being a steward of the land, a steward of the region. Is that what you're saying? It it absolutely is. And yeah, now why why? Like, why does that matter? I totally agree. Yeah, and I think that's that's a big conversation point right now, which like you know, our our mayor, uh, my brother has said, it is really important right now for uh we we welcome business, small, medium, big size business. We want you here. We want, we want that, and and we want you to invest and reinvest in the San Francisco Bay Area. That is so crucial. So why why is that so important? Like, what why is that important to you? How how did that come up? And and then how how are you influencing companies to that end?

SPEAKER_02

I I think people judge San Francisco, and it's easy to have judge San Francisco by the headlines, but increasingly they're gonna start judging the character and growth of the city based off of who is still choosing to build here, right? And and this doesn't need to be a political statement. You can have attitudes about AI, you can not care about clean tech or climate technologies. Um, you can be a retailer that is, you know, running a family-owned business and sustaining growth for that family product for years. The real signal, I think, of a city's growth and resurgence is gonna be in the types of ways that those employers invest locally. And I think this is important because um, if you take a look at the talent and density that is created by AI companies taking out space downtown, they're not just employing folks locally, they're building inroads with some of the world-class institutions in the state of California that facilitate a lot of generative AI research. If you think about developing a climate and energy company here in California, actually during SF Climate Week, the mayor facilitated a conversation with a bunch of energy companies, several who started taking space downtown because of proximity to Lawrence Livermore National Labs and Lawrence Berkeley National Labs. You start to create this connective tissue between talent and other ecosystems and actors that exist here. I'll name one more. Um, an arts institution a few months ago started a partnership with NVIDIA because they wanted to make sure that AI sort of kind of grows in prominence around the world, that art students feel like they're not getting impacted or displaced by that, but that they have a way to integrate the technologies, the tools, and what could be the next phase of art and AI interaction design in the city. And so it's about being a good steward. But I think what it is is being able to connect the dots between a base of employment, a pool of talent, and the surrounding ecosystem and how you plug into that can change in a variety of ways. But plugging into that now more than ever, I think will impact outcomes for cities, outcomes for employee retention. And frankly, I think that's going to be defining characteristics of how policy actually grows cities moving ahead, not just policies coming in on high from Washington, DC, but place-based regional policies will really create a wave of how San Francisco moves ahead.

SPEAKER_01

And I think you talking about AI and these big companies coming in, and it was something that we had talked about previously of the disconnect in San Francisco and how I think people have perceptions of the city, they know San Francisco for different things. There's so much going on here. Right now, most of what you hear is the AI headlines. But I think there's, you know, you are involved with the symphony, correct?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

You know, and there's this amazing, and the history of the art culture here is incredible. And I think a lot of that is disconnected in the city and Commonwealth Club. Yeah, you know, you are a part of something that's trying to connect those dots. Connect the dots, going back to connecting the dots.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I I think that um, you know, I I want to go take a step back and just make sure that what I'm pointing out here is clear or coming through, which is if if you if you're an employer in the city and you just, you know, support your workforce, that is a way to grow a company. But I think if you care about the outcomes of that workforce, about their well-being, all of a sudden you retain that workforce a little longer. If you care about their schools and the ability for those schools and districts to thrive and be safe and welcoming for families of all stripes, you start to grow a broader ecosystem of connection with your neighbors, not just your colleagues, but the people that you lay your head close to. If you then start to care about local nonprofits, local arts institutions, local entities that maybe don't affect your day-to-day, that connective tissue builds a much broader and more vibrant city. That's my thesis. And I think that is why, to your point, Alex, Alexander, that we wanted to make sure that we, when I go inside of a tech company, that you start to gear policy that grows the tech and the product, but also start to build connective tissue around the region.

SPEAKER_03

Do you feel like tech leaders right now are hit to this? Do you feel like our innovation leaders locally are like act, this is actively in their dialogue? Or is this something that's still emerging? I mean, where where are we in the evolution of this sort of understanding and connection to this important principle?

SPEAKER_02

I think, I think that so there's an interesting journey. In the in the first wave, so um tech web 2.0, when all these apps started getting funded, um, and Twitter took out space on Market Street downtown. That era, there was we were a lot of these tech companies were flushed with cash, interest rates were low, Silicon Valley Bank was lending in spades, as were venture capital firms of all stripes. And so I think you saw companies like a Salesforce with Benioff's leadership, or a Postmates, like where I came from, or a Pinterest signing up to invest in local community efforts, food bank efforts, fun runs here and there. They were more willing to dole out the cash. I do think something contracted and something happened around the pandemic. Certain economic headwinds came in. I think the the national infrastructure with Trump coming in also changed the attitude of like what it meant for companies to invest in regional initiatives, uh diversity initiatives. And so there has been a contraction of this thinking, no doubt. But I think there's something different going on in San Francisco right now. I think that especially because this city has previously had so many reputational debates nationally. When you show up in San Francisco now, I think that tech leaders have a different kind of obligation simply to build their companies because now they're dealing with national narratives about I really want this researcher to come to my AI company. They're based in Philadelphia right now or Pittsburgh right now, and they need to overcome this sense of what San Francisco might be in their mind. I'm making this up. And so I think tech leaders need to be hip to it at from a first principles perspective from just attracting talent and retaining that talent locally. But I think what happens is if they're not fully dialed into it yet, you don't get that sense of synergy with community that can really make a community blossom and can really make a company blossom. This is why I think what what Baxter was mentioning, the Commonwealth Club's efforts, is really interesting. So they started convening 50 leaders from around the city called the San Francisco Futures Initiative, SFFI. And it had folks from government, it had folks from the SF Downtown Development Corporation, it had leaders from tech, it had people from the arts. And what we noticed was that you have all over the city so many disparate factions of activity, but no connective backbone linking it all together. So you have a nonprofit working on immigrant challenges here. And then over here, you have a tech company whose HR team is saying, hey, uh, for four employees, my their workplace visa authorization is about to lapse. I can't get in touch with the right government agency. Um, but if there was a connective tissue between the two, workplace retention and job retention that would expand the tech space in San Francisco would benefit from knowing that there's a nonprofit over here helping facilitate that. Or similarly, there's a lot of conversation in SF about the arts and how maybe the presence of AI companies and a lot of economic gain for some, but not for all, is displacing those that may not be able to stay in the city on an art salary or with an art style income. Um California uh College for the Arts, for example, has had to change hands of ownership. It's going to Vanderbilt University, for example, and that has created a little Discord. But if you were able to take a look at a bird's eye view of all the different arts institutions, Minnesota Street Project having amazing space for a gallery over there, an up-and-coming um maybe a student at University of San Francisco that wants to break into the arts, maybe non-philanthropic uh institutions that want to create grant opportunities across those players. Right now, San Francisco has so much creativity across all these different spaces, but no coordinating backbone, no, no conductor for that orchestra. And so institutions like the Commonwealth Club are trying to bridge that gap. So the tech leader knows exactly what's going on at the community level. That community player knows what's going on at the philanthropic level, and the philanthropic player knows what's happening at the government level. And I think if you had more of that coordinated dialogue, you get a vibrancy in the city that hasn't occurred yet. And um, it's awesome that that's happening right now in San Francisco because I think if you can repeat that playbook, other cities will start to copy that and take note.

SPEAKER_01

I think longevity plays a key there too, because we're such a city of iterations. Yeah. There are these ways where we're constantly changing. And so I think to have connectivity that can weather those iterations and get some history and have it just makes that foundation that much.

SPEAKER_02

I agree. And I think the reason that kind of matters is sometimes, and this is not a political statement. Sometimes I think companies who very much have a bottom line and a fiduciary interest, if things are not trending well, maybe it's the bust cycle, maybe it's political politics, maybe it's policies that they don't like. There's a refrain in California, which is like, all right, we're gonna bounce, we're gonna go to Texas, or we're gonna go to Miami. And we've we saw that very recently, a few years ago, with you know, prior leadership in the city, but this exodus that somehow Miami was a place to go, or Montana was the place to go, or Utah was a place to go, and not to poo-poo those jurisdictions. But if companies were more hip to this model, to think that their growth, their talent, their retention, and their stability is better served by being anchored into the rest of the community, then you wouldn't have this boom and bust cycle where all of a sudden workforces are displaced, um, taxable revenues are displaced, people threaten to leave. And that creates more of an adversarial dynamic, I think, with with city officials and tech officials or executives. And I think if we look at investing locally, you'll see a lot of economic upside for these executives and these technology leaders, but you'll also see a stability to the growth and the promise of the city that hasn't been seen because of those boobs and busts recently.

SPEAKER_03

So are you saying that when we start to do this, that we'll flatten out, we won't be boom bust, but like we can be perhaps just like boom or stable boom, you know, in a in a consistent way on a go forward? Is that is that a real scenario for San Francisco?

SPEAKER_02

I do, I believe it's real. So I think that, you know, Baxter and I were talking about before the podcast started, like what is what's often misunderstood about San Francisco? And you know, I've got family all over the country, red states, blue states, big cities, small cities. And I think right now there's still a visual perception of what SF is or isn't. I think the more that we have institutions that generate a lot of wealth, right, like private employers and technology as an example, a little bit more anchored into the city, having the conferences here instead of going on a retreat in, you know, the North Bay, for example, or making sure that they care about what happens at their schools so that way there aren't antagonisms between, you know, teachers' unions and families. All of a sudden you get different outcomes. And I think, Alexander, these outcomes are happening right now. If you walk right outside where we are right now, not a heavily trafficked or dense corridor, you see all kinds of people patronizing food trucks on a beautiful sunny day in a park in the corner of a city. If you go downtown, you see not only office space taken out, right? Like take open AI and anthropic out of it, although that's great economically. You see all these vacant storefronts that were vacant for various reasons, now having pop-ups of coffee shops and Indian food trucks. Um, a dear friend of mine, Katie Burnhambaum, I may be mispronouncing her last name, has revi repurposed an entire block right in front of the battery once a month or once every other month to create um these like bungra and beats activations, which as a South Asian dude is cool. But all of a sudden you have music and vendors and people and commerce. I I think this is happening right now.

SPEAKER_03

I agree. It it is happening. And what do we need to pour gasoline on right now that maybe like needs more oxygen or needs more fuel? You know, we're trending in the right direction. That's great. I mean, the the signals are you cannot deny, but give us the pedagogy or the Dow of Vikram. You know, if you were to help um inspire uh our leaders uh today, yeah, government, um, tech, policy, nonprofit, etc., what message would you have? Yeah, where where where should we be focusing? What's what are we not doing enough of? Or where's where do we put need to put more spotlight on right now?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. I I I think that so hopefully this doesn't come across as too woo-woo. But I think that right now the biggest challenge to the to the growth and character of San Francisco is a polarization within San Francisco. And you could point to this nationally and take a look at our politics and be like, people aren't talking, the MAGA right doesn't agree with the far left. Like that makes sense intellectually, right? Fox News versus MS Now or where we get our information creates rifts. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about right here in our home, take a look at some of the challenges of the last few years. There was a huge debate and off of real data about spikes in anti Asian. Hate during the pandemic, grandmothers, older senior citizens of the AAPI community having incidences. At the same time, there was a huge debate in our district attorney's office about not just putting people away, but really meeting them where there are real interventions on rehabilitative reforms, better jobs, good paying jobs. But because of the polarization, I believe that sometimes gets played out even in our own communities of just this side not talking to the other side, you couldn't have a both and. Yes, we need safety and we need rehabilitative reforms. You had an either or. I saw the same thing. You know, I'm I'm a bonus parent now. I'm very lucky to have um families enrolled in SF public schools. But during the pandemic, when there was huge discord debates about um teachers going back to schools and families that were, you know, understandably frustrated, you had this pitting of uh teachers' unions versus families. And like more dialogue facilitated by our city leaders there would have been able to cool down those temperatures. And I think because those still haven't been sufficiently addressed, we recently had to deal with the strike very with very difficult challenges. And there are people who are involved in those conversations who are dealing with way more equities than I'm dealing with, right, as a bystander. But what I'm saying is on crime and safety, pitting the rehabilitative advocates with the safety advocates, on school districts, pairing the teachers' unions with family advocates, uh, when it comes to just uh the sense of developing, building more or not building more, and where we distribute this, there's often this kind of nimbi versus yimbi attitude cut by districts. I think the biggest thing, the Vikram pedagogy, which is why I've been able to work both uh at civil liberties groups like the ACLU and work for tech companies who often don't get along, work with labor unions and clean energy, work against them when you're working at PostMids and Uber, is that more often than not, you can cool temperatures and build empathy in both directions if you decide to have a conversation. And I think that's exactly what San Francisco can do now, because you're we're we're having a moment where people from all over the world are coming here. They want to be here, but we've got to do a better job on some of these thornier issues of facilitating a dialogue. And I will end by saying I think what's super interesting is when you take a look at the technology companies, a lot of them that are coming in now, you talk about worker displacement. Tech companies are starting to have conversations with labor unions. I think that this is, you know, credit to the mayor for facilitating some of this dialogue where all of a sudden an autonomous vehicle company might be displacing certain jobs, but then the janitors union wants to have a conversation about what it's like to clean and maintain those facilities. That's a tech versus labor divide that you wouldn't often see unless people were motivated to have that cross-sector dialogue. That's my heuristic, that's my philosophy. And I think if San Francisco does that, we're gonna be a boom, not a bust cycle for a while now. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_03

Is that I was I'm gonna ask you, I'm not gonna ask you this question, but I like I really want to know your position, but I don't think this is the right forum for it. But it's like, do you think there should be a token tax? But we're not gonna, we're not, you don't need to answer that, but I'm really curious.

SPEAKER_01

We're we're getting a whole nother well, I think let's touch on because I think this is part of the fabric of the San Francisco culture, and I touched on it as how important our culture, our civic institutions to the city. You know, maybe you can speak on your involvement with the with the symphony. Because I think it's such, especially with San Francisco, it's such a part of our fabric in history. Um, and I think sometimes that gets glossed over with all the tech.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I think it's a very salient call out. I think cultural institutions, whether it's the arts, whether it's city commissions that the mayor appoints individuals to, um, whether it's just like a a local Toastmasters club where you, you know, folks come together and give speeches. I think that the promise of them is their convening ability. So San Francisco Symphony, um, I my mom tried to get me to play violin as a kid. I was terrible at it. Just many years later, I just realized that I love listening to it while I study and just bang out emails. Got more involved in in the National Symphony Orchestra in DC. When I moved here, I realized that I wanted to have a place to meet new people. I didn't really know people in tech. I came from a company, town, and government.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

It the symphony has brought me together, it has brought together so many disparate threads of my life. In in a few weeks, I'm going to be taking my parents who immigrated here from India to a concert where the one of the first Indian American Indians to win a Grammy in the US, AR Amon, will be playing with the San Francisco Symphony.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, that's great.

SPEAKER_02

Friday, literally tomorrow, um, my fiance's uh little one, younger one, Adeline, myself and and and Amber will be going to see Mahler number nine. And part of the reason is she's seeing activations around the symphony, about uh around the city about the symphony having a potentially uh a new conductor coming into town. And just like the marketing and on her bus stop to school, she sees that, she asks questions about it. So now I get to bond with with a youngin, you know, someone in middle school over classical music later this week. I'm mentioning these examples because there is a privilege to access certain cultural institutions like the arts, right? And there's a price of entry that can gate some people in and out of the symphony. And I frankly like to listen to Kendrick and Skrillix outside of the symphony, right? So there's even a cultural barrier to some. But the convening power of SEP institutions is so damn strong that in a 30-day period, I'll have a nostalgic experience with my mom with songs from India right here, a few blocks away from where we are now. And on Friday, I'll have a core memory experience with someone who's never been there before. And I think if you map that across so many other players, the Commonwealth Club, which is maybe an older institution, but convenes discourse on many of these topics in the city. A local, um, the Eastern neighborhood uh democratic club. It's a Dem club, it's political, but it brings people from certain districts on the eastern side of the city together to talk about issues that might affect them. Um, dinner parties, right? Uh dinner parties that that you might bring together with friends and families of yours. So all of a sudden you meet somebody next to you who's running for office, has a totally different worldview as you, or someone who's a tech exec and is a DJ too on the weekend. I think this is the most the most important untold story of San Francisco. These institutions that we're all worried about, are they gonna have ticket scales? Are there is there gonna be revenue? If we start to view them as drivers of convening back into the city, you can start to overcome that polarity that I talk about that I think really creates peril for a lot of cities in San Francisco. And I think that what the mayor has done with the space in front of City Hall by having Fred again, a DJ, come and play there, or other artists from around the world come play here. It uses the city and the the petri dish of the city as a convener. And that is so damn powerful. And I think we need more of that on the politics, we need more of that with with tech employers, but we we certainly need it with the institutions we already have. Right. And I think the Symphony, Commonwealth Club, um, commissions that I'm a part of are really important places to do that.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

How can each of us, people who are watching this, yeah, you know, how can we, in our role of citizen, uh leader of our own organization, leader, maybe the founder of an organization, um, what what can we be doing to help make San Francisco to invest in San Francisco in a way that's good for us, that's um going towards the vision of this community we're talking about, of helping the workforce. Of it just seems like rising tides lift all ships. Yeah. It just seems like it just makes sense, right? It's like when our cultural institutions are funded and cared for, that um, you know, that creates there's a happiness quotient, a culture quotient that brings people to San Francisco, keeps them here. Um, when there's great health care and doctors, people want to be able to great schools, um, when our streets are clean, when organizations need something and there's an organization that provides something and then they're put in touch, like they're matchmade. You know, there's a mat, there's there's a connection. Like that is all, that's good. That's good for society, that's a good framework. Um, what can we be doing though to actualize this? Um, because it might feel a little overwhelming. Yeah, we're like, oh wow, this is amazing. It's going the right direction. And I think a lot of people are like, great, let's defer to our company leaders, let's defer to our policymakers, let's defer to the nonprofit leaders, let's defer to um, you know, the city hall. But I feel like there's an opportunity for each of us to play a role, however small or big. It could be financial, it could be time, right? It's like treasure, time, talent, all these things. Like, I don't know. I'm putting you on the spot here. Yeah. Any thought on that?

SPEAKER_02

I have a super important question because you're right. It's easy to defer responsibilities to other actors. We're all busy. We they get we care about our checkbook and our family, right? Uh, how we're gonna get to work and and can we keep a job? So this might sound highfalutant, but I think that there's at least three things that come to mind. The first is a little bit more doable, bring a friend into the city. I know that sounds maybe simple or silly, but I think that's like a very change agent-oriented way to have someone just see what it's like to come down to the ferry building right now or to, you know, buy coffee from a favorite um coffee cafe that you like. I think bringing people who don't live here back into the city, not for the commerce of it, but for the visual representation of the city's resurgence and this humming that I see that when I'm walking around, I think that's important. I I was trying to invite someone into town several months ago and they exclaimed that they didn't want to come. And that their their rationale was their point of view on what the city might or might not bring for their kids in town. It's old news.

SPEAKER_03

It's old news, it's old news, and then I hate it. So that's what you're getting at. You're saying the past is decidedly not the present.

SPEAKER_02

It's and or the present's not the past. And the only way, and this is sort of the second way, and this feels more theoretical as someone that does policy work inside of a company. I think about things in terms of comms and what's the message, you bring people in because the second thing I think we ought to do is be individual spokespeople for the narrative of San Francisco.

SPEAKER_00

Right.

SPEAKER_02

Um, I'm not saying that everything is hunky-dory. Costs are high for many. Um, there are still challenges. The economic recovery can be fragile. But if you bring people and they see a different attitude, and then they can be messengers and amplifiers out in the world, not even in San Francisco, then all of a sudden that kid that that aunt who came to visit you is talking, who's thinking about colleges, is maybe thinking about USF or thinking about a school in the region, or thinking about an apprenticeship program or an internship here one summer. I think that's important. The third thing, which is hard and structural, is for us to not lose sight of one truth, which is even if there's a lot of economic gain and even if there's a lot of wealth creation right now because of new technologies, new leases, housing prices, and like equity gain from that, which you all know better than I, being positive for homeowners, there are still people who power San Francisco that are those institutions of culture, whether they play in the symphony or they take care of your kids when we're recording podcasts, um, or are our teachers who where the the barrier of entry to sustaining a life here is still hard, right? Both can be true. The city can be on the move and they can still be tough. So I think bring people, expound a narrative for the rest of the world to see that San Francisco is San Francisco again, but let's not sleep on the fact that there's still some structural challenges for folks. And so when we think about building an inclusive city, in my opinion, workforce housing and childcare, making sure that people that provide those services can stay in this city. That's a monumental structural task. Right. But I would say pushing our leaders to keep that on the ballot and to keep elections kind of through that lens is is another way to demonstrate accountability.

SPEAKER_01

I want to ask you a question to kind of close things out. San Francisco, five, ten years out. Yeah. What are you most excited about that you're seeing today in that kind of longer term trajectory for San Francisco?

SPEAKER_02

I'm very excited at the use of space. I I I mean, you guys would know better than I, but I I think from tunnel tops, not too far from here, kind of a new vision for parks. Um the deployment of uh micromobility. We're we're a scooter family. We like the e-bikes that you can rent. Uh, they are, you know, say always wear a helmet, but like the ability to use infrastructure like um dedicated lanes for that. I don't know if this is doable from a zoning and and um regulatory perspective, but there have been discussions about repurposing some of the um downtown spaces into housing, repurposing some of the downtown spaces into university campuses. I think this is a moment where like big ideas are not being laughed out of the room, and like urban infrastructure and design have it having to be met with private capital and like you know, being compliant with planning codes and things like that. I'm excited about that. I think San Francisco won't look different from its core character. Right. San Francisco might feel different for how we go utilize parks, utilize spaces, deal with like technology in the world around us, but things are gonna look a little bit different with how we interact with that downtown, I think, and I'm excited for that.

SPEAKER_01

And I think that that goes back to you know what we were talking about originally with the AI boom and all of this, you know, capital coming into the city and not just being transactional with the city about taking that and dispersing it into the city to make this and that money going into you know, not directly, but with the parks and all these, you know, sunset dunes and the rebuilding that a lot of the playgrounds have been redone lately. And I think that that if and then that goes into you know, all of these things come into play with the connective tissue where it's San Francisco has so much to offer and it's accelerating quickly right now. And if we can harness that and put more roots down, yeah, and connect it and have that communication, then we can instead of like you were saying, instead of that boom and bust, yeah, create the foundation that gives us that future.

SPEAKER_03

It's yeah, it's it's just you know, we're we're we're going up and we're we're setting a new standard every month, every year. And I think that's that's really what we're after is just um it's quality of life, it's it's um it's humanity, yeah. You know, it's culture, it's art, um, it's happiness, it's um good citizenry and looking out for each other. I think that these and so much more. And and I I sort of think back to uh, you know, I raised you know in a family that really espoused and still does giving of oneself, um time, of course, but financially, you know, and um and I think back, and I you know, I haven't been doing this uh as of late. I had previously, but I I want to start doing it again, inspired, I think, in part from this conversation, of course, my parents as well. But yeah, it's you know, it like whether it's five percent, one percent, ten percent of your earnings, twenty, thirty, forty. You know, I was just recently at a at an event where I got to meet Tom Steyer, who's who's running for governor, and he, you know, he's said, you know, in his lifetime he's you know giving and he joked because his kids were in the room, he said, you know, they're not necessarily happy about it, chuckle, chuckle, chuckle. But most of you know, my funds are gonna be given away during the course of my life. Yeah. And I think there's something to be said for that, and it's a reminder for all of us, myself included. But I hope for everybody that's listening, it's like this is a city worth um not just saving. We've we've saved it. We're it's it's that that's not our our our standard. That's not our goals to save. Our our goal is to just um our to make the city the best it can be for us and for future generations.

SPEAKER_00

Amplify.

SPEAKER_03

To amplify how incredible and majestic this city is. It's exceptional. It really is. And it's only as good as the people who tend and care for it. That's right. Right. And so as stewards, we can each be a steward. And I think um for us to give, if if not just the tech titans and the leaders who are watching this today, um, but also uh the employees um uh or the independent contractors uh or those who are self-employed, you know, let's get let's let's decide together. And I hope that we can just say, you know what, yeah, let's give, whether it's a thousand, ten thousand, a hundred thousand, a million, ten million, you know, these numbers matter. And and then when we bundle it together, I think there's there's a huge opportunity to smooth out that boom and bust. And I do think that it's like we have nothing but up to go. You know, people constantly ask us, oh, you know, is are we at the top yet for real estate? And as our institutions or nonprofits or cultural institutions or streets, all these things are getting, you know, more and more sort of well-tended for and up-leveling, so too will real estate continue to rise. And that's just the reality. And so um, for so many reasons and more, I hope each of us will consider making a gift this year and beyond, that's just really meaningful.

SPEAKER_02

I what one thing that's interesting about that is um I've noticed something phenomenal about if you take America, you zoom out in America, there's a lot of um culture wars across socioeconomic strata. But if you take a look at what is doable when you invest, right? There's been um this quasi-governmental, quasi-non-governmental entity focused on downtown recovery, the San Francisco Downtown Development Corporation. It's pulling private capital from a lot of high net worth individuals to deploy into local rebuilding, local kind of reutilization of space, um, amplify augmenting a lot of government initiatives that exist already, but pulling in private capital to supercharge that. That's a very good example of like how giving can help turn a city when you have large sums of money to play with. And it's not a model that oftentimes a city government would feel like copacetic doing because they feel like, oh, I'm bringing in money from it, it feels very Gotham-esque, right? The Batman-esque where like a limited few are funding outcomes. But the point there is you're bringing in assets where you can for big structural changes. To Alexander's point, though, if you are not that individual that has, you know, lots of liquid capital to deploy, micro actions and microinvestments also make a difference, right? If you give to the women's shelter in the mission, which does a bunch of workforce development work for single moms in that community, or if you give to local arts institutions, or you give by bringing that friend, taking them to a boba place and saying, we're gonna buy here, we're gonna invest in this local retail market here, and that has a knock-on effect for economic gains for that retailer, which then expands the tax pool. All of those are examples of giving. And I think that's a really important distinction because the city, or sorry, it's an important point he makes because the city could benefit from all of that. And I think sometimes it's easy to wipe our hand and say, Well, I don't have those means. I'm not gonna pay for a park renovation. So therefore, what's my role here? But I think there's it's a broad spectrum if you have pride in the growth of the city. Right. And this is the first time I got to say, in part because of the support that we had from you all as being a client of yours, that when you've got a deep equity in the city, you're you're you you wanna have it with pride. You want to view the city with pride. And so you're a little bit motivated to do that. But I think that pride exists regardless of whether you're a renter or you're an owner, whether you've lived here for a short number of months or you're um, you know, a longtime resident of the city. And I think that sense of pride investing in it and building it will make all of us kind of feel a little bit more activated to care about it's the equity of the outcome of purpose. I don't know if that makes sense, but I feel like pride in the city changes the the ratio by which someone feels that they should be investing in it. Right. And I think the more we invest in it, the more people feel civically activated to care for it. And then they can bequeath it as an organism to the next generation. But unless you treat it like a precious heirloom, if you're just transactional about it, then obviously you're just gonna be very um transient about it. And I think this is a moment where we can harness a lot of that giving and and that that desire to want to play ball and be present here in a new way. That's my thought at least. I like it.

SPEAKER_01

Thank you for being here. That was a great conversation. Hopefully, we can uh do another one sometime because there's just so much to talk about right now and just with the city. Um but thanks for being with us, and uh hopefully we'll we'll see you on the next one. Like, subscribe, all those things.

SPEAKER_03

We'll see you around the city. Reach out anytime.