Green Shoots in San Francisco

Believe me, I have no empirical evidence to share about a turnaround in the economy as it probably doesn’t exist just yet.

But I do have a hopeful and interesting story to share about a tech startup taking over the abandoned space of a shuttered hedge fund and making cool, cutting edge stuff.  This is what America used to be really good at and it could be exactly this type of thing that could help pull us out of our funk…

From Bits (NYT):
In the middle of San Francisco’s financial district sits Touch Revolution, a start-up that just hit the scene this year. As the name suggests, Touch Revolution specializes in making touch-screen technology for a wide range of computing devices.

Touch Revolution calls the 42nd floor of a 48-story office building home. A hedge fund used to occupy the space but bailed out as Wall Street’s collapse, um, affected its business model. And so, a line of trading desks packed with power to fuel monitors and computers has been turned into a workbench covered in motherboards, testing equipment and touch displays.

The article goes on to mention the fact that another tech startup in the area called Flip Video was just acquired by Cisco Systems for $590 million and that there are now a host of brand new consumer electronics outfits in San Fran working on and launching new stuff as we speak.

It’s nice to hear about people doing things other than trading stocks, flipping real estate and suing each other.

Sources:

Goodbye Hedge Fund, Hello Touch Revolution (NYT)