San Francisco Bay Area

From Jan Wilmake's personal knowledge base

San Francisco Bay Area

The San Francisco Bay Area in California, USA, is Jan_Wilmake's target relocation destination as of 2025. The plan to move there is a recurring strategic motivation that shapes Jan's networking priorities, career decisions, and startup positioning across his 2025 notes.

The Plan

As of August 2025, Jan had formulated a clear sequence: "First Palo Alto, close to networking — target Woodside or other hilly area close to nature after." Palo Alto was the initial target for proximity to the Bay Area tech ecosystem, with Woodside (a wooded, hillside community adjacent to Palo Alto) identified as a longer-term residential preference combining nature access with proximity to the network.

Why San Francisco

Jan's interest in the Bay Area is not generic ambition — it is specifically tied to:

  1. Cloudflare: Headquartered in San Francisco; the Cloudflare pursuit was the central professional goal of 2025, and proximity would support that relationship.
  2. Network density: Jan's key contacts (Enes_Akar at Upstash/San Jose, Ryan_Hoover at Weekend Fund, the Parallel AI team) are Bay Area-based. The async developer-twitter network that Jan operates in is geographically concentrated there.
  3. DevRel positioning: Jan explicitly articulated being "all-in on starting a real DevRel capacity in SF" in August 2025.
  4. Startup ecosystem access: Jan's pre-seed fundraising conversations with Weekend Fund and other investors centred on Bay Area investors. Physical presence would remove the friction of transatlantic scheduling.

Connection to Parallel AI

Jan's contractor role at Parallel_AI — a San Francisco AI company — was partly chosen because it offered a bridge toward Bay Area integration without requiring an immediate visa or relocation. The Parallel AI relationship represented an on-ramp: establishing Bay Area credibility and connections before physically relocating.

Status as of Early 2026

Following the November 2025 period and subsequent recovery, the Bay Area relocation timeline is uncertain. Jan returned to Groningen, and his early 2026 notes focus on local and remote job opportunities — suggesting the Bay Area move has been deferred but not abandoned.

See Also