• John and Matine Yuksel moved from San Francisco to the Midwest in 2020.

• The brothers and business partners lived in Iowa and Cincinnati while founding their startup.

• Sometimes they miss living in California, but love the friendly people and affordable prices of Cincinnati.

This essay is based on a conversation with John Yuksel, 33, and Matine Yuksel, 29, two brothers who moved from San Francisco to Dubuque, Iowa, in 2020 to start Beltways, an accelerated pavement company. The brothers then moved to Cincinnati in 2022. Their company is based nearby in Northern Kentucky.

John: We are children of immigrant parents who grew up in southern Arizona.

I always knew I wanted to be close to my brother. He's my only sibling. After college, we lived in San Diego for a few years and then moved to San Francisco in 2018.

Death: San Francisco is incredible. I've never seen such a diverse environment there and it's a world-class environment for companies, especially in technology.

John: Matine worked for Walmart e-commerce and later got a job at Apple. I worked as a lawyer.

We paid an incredibly high rent, but had the best view of the Pacific and saw the sunset outside our windows every night.

But San Francisco was in the apocalypse. During COVID, the streets were empty. It felt unsafe. My car was broken into several times.

Death: COVID helped us rethink and reprioritize things. Instead of working on bringing the next generation iPhone to market, I wanted to build a new product that few people have ever heard of.

John: Beltways is actually our father's dream. Forty years ago, he lived in Istanbul and realized that today's forms of mobility were not moving people efficiently. He came up with a modular design to make pedestrian routes ten times faster.

John and Matine Yuksel with their parents.Courtesy of John and Matine Yuksel

My brother and I always wanted to do something together and years after our father came up with the idea, we started looking into it.

Death: We founded Beltways in July 2020. We quickly realized we had to move out of San Francisco. It would have been far too expensive to do what we needed to do there.

John: It wasn't the right place for our startup. We're a large hardware manufacturing startup. It made much more sense to be near industrial technology clusters. We wanted to be in the Midwest, where manufacturing is still profitable.

Death: John met someone with experience in the sidewalk business and he offered us a deal in Iowa.

We moved to Dubuque, Iowa in 2020

John: It was a very small town in the middle of the cornfields, an hour and a half from any airport. Dubuque is a beautiful, quiet town on the Mississippi. We could drive anywhere in the city in two minutes.

We practically lived in a mansion. We had a three-story, four-bedroom house for half the price of our condo in San Francisco.

Death: The snow was definitely a change. We got our share of physical activity by shoveling snow.

It was a different way of life. We had to be focused and Iowa was good because we didn't have too many distractions. The two years we spent in Iowa flew by.

The brothers said they had to adjust to small-town life after moving to Dubuque, Iowa.Courtesy of John and Matine Yuksel

John: We built the prototype for the fastest walkway in the world when we lived there. It was a thirty-meter-long system and earned us our first VC check.

This was a huge milestone for us. We put all our money into this company. We quit our regular jobs. We refinanced our house. There was nothing more fulfilling than turning our father's invention into a commercial venture.

Death: It was a surreal day when he came out and rode the system for the first time. It was the icing on the cake to see his enthusiasm for something he dreamt up so many years ago.

John: We had to look for a new location for our company. The next step was to pilot our walkway. We were invited by several airports to do a pilot demo of our system.

We knew that CVG Airport in Cincinnati had a real track record of innovation and startup support. The area was also beneficial for manufacturing. It's super cheap. The facility we're currently in is just a little more expensive than my rent in San Francisco and is 20,000 square feet.

We moved to Cincinnati in 2022

John: We even moved our parents here. We wanted our father to work with us and be a part of the company personally. Our parents live three floors below us in our building in the Mount Adams neighborhood.

When we moved to Cincinnati, we felt like we were back in a big city after two years in Iowa. We have big sports teams and a big major airport. The climate is much more temperate.

The winters have been pretty mild so far. The spring is lush and green. You can kayak down the rivers and there are great hiking trails nearby. The air quality is great. And the summers aren't 120 degrees like Arizona.

I met my partner and now I have a child who was born here in Cincinnati. The city has become home for us. The company is here, the whole family is here.

John and Matine Yuksel enjoy a football game in Cincinnati.Courtesy of John and Matine Yuksel

Sometimes we miss living on the coast. California is a beautiful place. We love the climate and the diversity of the people. San Francisco is where technology starts and flows out. It really is the birthplace of many amazing things.

Death: But the tech scene in Cincinnati has also been very good to us. It's growing. It's a tight-knit startup community. From the moment we got here, the community was so welcoming.

John: And it's much cheaper here.

Bringing our father's dream to life was incredible

Death: We started Beltways in a modest garage in Tucson, where my brother built prototypes himself. Now we're in a 20,000-square-foot facility here in Northern Kentucky, right next to our first airport customer. And we manufacture in the USA.

John: Our goal is to become an official partner of the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles and to provide temporary high-speed transportation.

Cincinnati is a great place to raise a family and run a business, and we can see ourselves staying there for the foreseeable future.

But our ultimate goal is to make our sidewalks commonplace and to spread this technology around the world. Wherever we need to go to make that possible, we will. This is bigger than us.

Read the original article on Business Insider

The post We’re millennial brothers and enterprise companions who left San Francisco’s tech bubble for the Midwest manufacturing scene. We by no means would have been capable of afford to launch our startup in California. appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Those two, plus Colgate’s Patriot League final defeat of Navy, are the most relevant developments from Wednesday. The schedule expands considerably Thursday, and here’s what to look for as the fates of several more teams will be sorted out.

Michigan vs. Indiana (Big Ten second round, 11:30 am, Big Ten Network): Juwan Howard returns to Michigan’s bench from suspension as the Wolverines (17-13) look to break out of a rut that’s seen them alternate wins and losses for the last nine games. Indiana (18-12) wishes it suffered from that inconsistency; the Hoosiers have dropped seven of nine since the calendar flipped to February.

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Bracket impact: Michigan’s probably safely in, but a victory means the Wolverines probably don’t have to fret about the slightest chance of getting sent to a play-in game. The Hoosiers’ slim at-large hopes will end with a loss.

Florida vs. Texas A&M (SEC second round, noon, SEC Network): Florida (19-12) has done just enough to hang around the at-large conversation, beating the teams they’re supposed to (7-1 against teams below .500 in SEC) and losing to nearly everyone of substance in the league (other than a Feb. 19 defeat of Auburn). Texas A&M (20-11) is super-streaky, having started 15-2 before dropping nine of 10 and now winning four in a row. These are the only real borderline SEC teams this season.

Bracket impact: Loser is off to the NIT, while the winner gets a shot at Auburn on Friday.

Creighton vs. Marquette (Big East quarterfinal, approx. 2:30, Fox Sports 1): Those who believe the NET ranking is an end-all, be-all probably think Creighton (20-10) could use a victory or two this week. The Bluejays, No. 66 in the NET, should be good to go regardless thanks to a 5-5 mark in Quadrant 1 games. Their inclusion here is merely in the name of thoroughness.

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Bracket impact: Both teams are probably going to land between the 7 and 10 lines when seedings come out Sunday. The winner will have a shot at getting to the ceiling of that range.

Miami vs. Boston College (ACC quarterfinal, approx. 2:30, ESPN2): Miami is in the same category as Creighton. Its NET ranking isn’t great (61st), but it is 4-1 in Quadrant 1 games and has 10 true road victories — more than any other power conference team.

The diagnosis here is the Hurricanes (22-9) are safe regardless of whether they beat ACC spoiler Boston College. But just in case, it wouldn’t hurt to do what Wake Forest couldn’t and bring the Eagles’ season to an end.

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Bracket impact: Miami won’t get helped much, if at all, with a victory. But a loss means the Canes will be discussed as a borderline team for the next few days even if that shouldn’t be the case.

Colorado vs. Oregon (Pac-12 quarterfinal, approx. 5:30, Pac-12 Network): Fourth-seeded Colorado (20-10) has won seven of its last eight, including an upset of Arizona, to close in on the fringe of the at-large conversation. Fifth-seeded Oregon (19-13) disposed of Oregon State in Wednesday’s first round and is in a similar situation as the Buffaloes: In dire need of victories.

Bracket impact: Both teams still need multiple victories in the Pac-12 tournament to make a compelling at-large case. Consider this elimination game for NCAA purposes, much like Florida-Texas A&M.

Wyoming vs. UNLV (Mountain West quarterfinal, approx. 5:30, CBS Sports Network): The wackiest conference tournament this week might be the Mountain West’s, which has three near-certain NCAA teams, and three or four others (depending on how you feel about Nevada) capable of making life miserable for anyone in the league.

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Smack dab in the middle is Wyoming (24-7), which dropped four of its last seven to find itself right at the edge of the field. The Cowboys are 4-4 in Quadrant 1 games and 6-1 in Quad 2, but they have only two victories over likely NCAA tournament teams (Boise State and Colorado State at home). A multiday stay in Las Vegas is advised, and that starts by beating UNLV on its home floor.

Bracket impact: Unless it wins the Mountain West, Wyoming is going to be one of the borderline teams everyone is talking about right through Sunday evening. It’s not rocket science: The further the Cowboys get this week, the better their chances.

North Texas vs. Rice (Conference USA Quarterfinal, 6:30, Stadium): The defending Conference USA champs and this year’s top seed, North Texas has a decent profile — 9-1 on the road, 23-5 overall, a 5- 2 mark in quadrant 2 games. There’s only one problem: There just isn’t much heft at the top of the Mean Green’s resume besides a victory at fringe at-large candidate UAB. (The same can be said of UAB, which won at North Texas and Saint Louis but also had a few more questionable losses than the Mean Green).

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Bracket impact: There are some intriguing teams in C-USA, with North Texas, UAB and Louisiana Tech chief among them. It’s highly unlikely any of them can land an at-large berth.

Oklahoma vs. Baylor (Big 12 quarterfinal, 7, ESPN): Largely forgotten about as it sunk to .500, Oklahoma (17-14) enters the Big 12 tournament on a three-game winning streak. Granted, beating Oklahoma State, West Virginia and Kansas State doesn’t help much this season. But the Sooners might get some extra attention if they get on a run in Kansas City.

Bracket impact: Baylor could fall off the No. 1 line with a loss. Oklahoma has more than a game’s worth of work to do to get itself firmly in the at-large conversation.

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Bracket impact: The Hokies are more of a predictive metrics darling than anything else, but there’s no doubt a victory over the Irish improves their standing and inches them closer to the edge of the field.

Washington State vs. UCLA (Pac-12 quarterfinals, 9, Pac-12 Network): Washington State (19-13) beat California on Wednesday, which does little for the seventh-seeded Cougars’ biggest problem: A complete dearth of Quadrant 1 victories. Beating UCLA would change that.

Bracket impact: Think of Washington State as Virginia Tech Lite. A victory over the Bruins would help, while a loss effectively ends what slim chance there is of reaching the field of 68.

Last four included: VCU, Rutgers, Xavier, Wyoming

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First four on the outside: BYU, Wake Forest, Florida, Dayton

Next four on the outside: Oklahoma, Indiana, Texas A&M, Oregon

Moving to: Saint Peter’s, Wyoming

Moving out: Iona, Wake Forest

Conference call: Big Ten (8), Big East (7), Big 12 (6), SEC (6), ACC (4), Mountain West (4), American Athletic (3), Pac-12 (3), West Coast (3), Atlantic 10 (2)

West vs East, South vs Midwest

(1) WEST COAST/Gonzaga vs. (16) BIG WEST/Long Beach State

(8) Seton Hall vs. (9) San Diego State

(5) LSU vs. (12) SUMMIT/South Dakota State

(4) Texas Tech vs. (13) SOUTHERN/Chattanooga

(3) Tennessee vs. (14) IVY/Princeton

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(6) Iowa vs. (11) MISSOURI VALLEY/Loyola Chicago

(7) OHIO VALLEY/Murray State vs. (10) Creighton

(2) ACC/Duke vs. (15) ATLANTIC SUN/Jacksonville

It will fly under the radar among the other tournaments in the Las Vegas area, but the Big West tournament (featuring top seed Long Beach State) has a chance to be especially wacky. Nobody got to 20 wins. Only UC Irvine didn’t lose 10 games (and the Anteaters dropped nine). Six teams finished within three games of the league lead. … LSU’s defeat of Alabama to close the regular season was its first over a likely tournament team in eight weeks. The Tigers started 15-1, and have gone 6-9 since. …

If Iowa can get past Northwestern on Thursday, it actually has a reasonably decent draw in the Big Ten tournament even if didn’t beat its likely opponents in the regular season. The Hawkeyes lost 48-46 at Rutgers, whom they would play in the quarterfinals, and they have losses by four points and two points against possible semifinal foe Illinois. … Coach K’s final ACC tournament run begins Thursday as Duke meets Syracuse, which will play without suspended guard Buddy Boeheim.

(1) PAC-12/Arizona vs. (16) NORTHEAST/Bryant-HORIZON/Northern Kentucky winner

(8) Michigan State vs. (9) Iowa State

(5) Alabama vs. (12) CONFERENCE USA/North Texas

(4) BIG EAST/Providence vs. (13) MID-AMERICAN/Toledo

(3) BIG TEN/Illinois vs. (14) METRO ATLANTIC/Saint Peter’s

(6) Texas vs. (11) San Francisco

(7) Colorado State vs. (10) Miami

(2) SEC/Auburn vs. (15) SUN BELT/Georgia State

Arizona opens Pac-12 tournament play Thursday against Stanford, which uncorked a 16-1 run in the final three minutes to edge Arizona State on James Keefe’s buzzer beater. … Is Providence going to be a little rusty in the Big East tournament? It’s a fair question for the Friars, who haven’t played in nine days. They’ll face Butler in Thursday’s quarterfinals. …

Saint Peter’s is the top remaining seed in the Metro Atlantic tournament after Rick Pitino-led Iona lost to Rider in Wednesday’s quarterfinals. Pitino will instead take a team into the NIT for the first time since Louisville reached the semis in the event in 2006. … It won’t impact the composition of the field, but Colorado State’s matchup with Utah State could be one of the day’s best games. The Rams’ David Roddy and Utah State’s Justin Bean — the respective power forwards in the game — rank in the top 10 in the Mountain West in scoring.

(1) BIG 12/Baylor vs. (16) SWAC/Alcorn State-SOUTHLAND/Nicholls State winner

(8) Marquette vs. (9) Notre Dame

(5) AMERICAN ATHLETIC/Houston vs. (12) Xavier-Wyoming winner

(4) Arkansas vs. (13) AMERICA EAST/Vermont

(3) Villanova vs (14) PATRIOT/Colgate

(6) Southern California vs. (11) Michigan

(7) MOUNTAIN WEST/Boise State vs. (10) TCU

(2) Purdue vs. (15) BIG SOUTH/Longwood

It was 20 years and five coaches ago that Alcorn State last made the NCAA tournament. The SWAC’s top seed nearly got bounced in the quarterfinals Wednesday, but the Braves rallied past Prairie View A&M to win in overtime. … Xavier looks much, much better on paper than it does on the court. The Musketeers swept Creighton and beat Connecticut, Marquette and Ohio State. That’s probably enough to get them a ticket to at least Dayton, but Xavier will have no one but himself to blame if it winds up in the NIT. In their last 10 games, the Musketeers went 2-8 and lost to St. John’s (twice by double digits), Butler and DePaul.

Colgate turned back a second-half rally from Navy to win its third Patriot League tournament in the last four years. The Raiders (23-11) will make their fifth all-time NCAA trip and have won 15 in a row and 19 of 20 since a 4-10 start. They have a chance to match last year’s accomplishment of a No. 14 seeds. … Losses by teams such as Wake Forest and Xavier only increases the cushion for Michigan, which has plenty of daylight between itself and the edge of the field.

(1) Kansas vs. (16) MID-EASTERN ATHLETIC/Norfolk State

(8) North Carolina vs. (9) Memphis

(5) Connecticut vs. (12) Rutgers/VCU winner

(4) UCLA vs. (13) WESTERN ATHLETIC/New Mexico State

(3) Wisconsin vs. (14) BIG SKY/Montana State

(6) Saint Mary’s vs. (11) SMU

(7) Ohio State vs. (10) ATLANTIC 10/Davidson

(2) Kentucky vs. (15) COLONIAL/UNC Wilmington

North Carolina has won 11 of its last 13 and hasn’t lost away from Chapel Hill since Jan. 22. The Tar Heels begin their ACC tournament Thursday against Virginia. … The top six seeds are still alive in the WAC, where New Mexico State owns the best overall record (24-6) but everyone left in the field has at least 19 victories. The WAC’s raid of the Southland, which notably brought Abilene Christian, Sam Houston State and Stephen F. Austin into the fold, made it a dramatically better basketball league this season. …

SMU moves out of play-in territory and onto the No. 11 lines. The Mustangs beat Houston at home and swept Memphis during the regular season, and would be well-served not to lose to anyone in the American Athletic tournament other than one of those two. … Ohio State lost three out of four in an eight-day span to close the regular season, including stumbles against Maryland and Nebraska. The Buckeyes could use something to feel good about coming out of the Big Ten tournament, even if it is beating a Penn State bunch that similarly struggled down the stretch.

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Austin made The headlines last year were for a number of reasons. There is a new headquarters for Oracle.Tesla Large Gigafactory in the capital of Texas. People, mostly technicians, have settled in the city away from the Bay Area, driving home prices soaring.

But it’s not just engineers. Austin has many venture capitalists including: Jim Breyer of Breyer Capital and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale said last year that he is running his venture capital company 8VC from Silicon Valley to the city.

“I don’t think everyone should move to Austin. I don’t think it’s right for everyone, but I think it’s right for us. ”

The Latest VCs to Call Austin Hometown Jeff Lewis Founder and Managing Partner of Bedrock Capital, an early stage venture capital firm four years ago with $ 1 billion in assets under management. Lewis began his investment career at the Founders Fund, where he was a partner for several years. He was or was a board member of companies such as Lyft, Nubank, Vercel and Workrise.

Lewis also led initial investments in Wish, Upstart, Tilray, Canva, Rippling, ClearCo, Flock Safety and many other unicorns. He is highly regarded for using the term “narrative break” to describe promising companies that are overlooked or undervalued because they do not align with popular narratives.

When moving to Austin, investors were disaffected with Silicon Valley and said they weren’t focused on solving what the region identified as a real problem.

Middle Officer Lewis said he first became acquainted with Austin after supporting Workrise (formerly known as RigUp), a market for skilled workers. In fact, he was the company’s first seed investor eight years ago and has invested in the company eight times since then.

Lewis said he’s drawn to the company not only because it’s “getting huge,” but also because “it’s far more interested in real people and places than today’s Silicon Valley giants.” ..

“Simply put, it’s a more humane tech company,” writes Lewis. “And what brought me to Texas was to look for this more humane genre of innovation. I live on the coast and am building a career as a technology entrepreneur and investor in Silicon Valley. I was there but I never felt it. As a coastline or an insider in Silicon Valley – I didn’t go to Stanford or get rich. “

TechCrunch spoke to Lewis to learn more about his decision to relocate his business to Austin and learn why Silicon Valley has become a “bubble” (spoiler note: you are you). May not be popular with many of them!) And he plans to invest more in Texas startup connections.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You said you grew up in Canada. What made you want to get into the technology industry?

I started out as an entrepreneur and founded a SaaS company in the travel industry. [Topguest].. I started the company in New York City and moved my team to San Francisco in 2009. I spent most of my career from 2009 to 2021 commuting between New York and science fiction. We eventually sold the company in 2011, which was a pretty good result. I joined the Founders Fund in 2012. So I’m addicted to investing. I made a very special career there and 2012 was a great opportunity to be a young VC in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. Ultimately, I focused on both consumer and corporate markets, helping companies like Lyft and Canva early on. I also made my first FinTech investment in Latin America and helped Nubank. The company is currently valued at $ 30 billion.

I grew up pretty humble and in 2017 I thought I was pretty successful as a VC. I have to make an effort to get back to what I want to do, which is more entrepreneurial. That is why we founded Bedrock at the end of 2017. I am currently using Fund III, which corresponds to my investment philosophy. That is, we try to find so-called narrative violations, or those narrative companies that are overlooked or undervalued. We were very early investors in cameos. Cameo, for example, is clearly a fairly well-known business by now.

You originally decided to lay the foundation in New York. Why?

When I was at the Founders Fund, I had houses in both cities (SF and NYC) so I was a kid who grew up in Calgary, Canada and wanted to live on the beach and be the center of the action. However, Silicon Valley tended to be a little overly self-referential and a little bit out of the way of the noise, so we decided to move to our headquarters in Bedrock, New York, in 2017. New York is not a city of horses so I decided to start a company there, but I have actually invested and continue to invest all over the country and honestly all over the world. We invested in WordPress early on and more recently in Argyle and Lambda School.

VC Geoff Lewis on moving to Austin and bursting the “self-referential” bubble in Silicon Valley – TechCrunch Source link VC Geoff Lewis on moving to Austin and bursting the “self-referential” bubble in Silicon Valley – TechCrunch

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