Moving to San Francisco as a Founder: The 2026 Resource List

Moving to San Francisco to build a company? Do it in this order: visa, a furnished place for the first month, company paperwork, then your people. For visas, start with Lighthouse or Founder Law, which both publish their prices. For housing, a 30-day Blueground stay buys you time to find a real lease. Incorporate with Stripe Atlas for $500, then register with the city within 30 days. For community, South Park Commons runs a residency that costs nothing and takes no equity.

Everything below was checked on October 23, 2026. A few names founders still recommend have shut down or been sold. We say which ones.

The short version

Need	Start here	Why	Watch out
Your visa	Lighthouse, Founder Law	Prices on the website	USCIS fees are extra
First home	Blueground	Furnished, 30-day minimum	Costs more than a lease
Incorporation	Stripe Atlas	$500, Delaware fees included	California and SF filings are still on you
Banking	Mercury	Free plan	A fintech, not a bank
Payroll	Gusto	$49/mo plus $6 a person	Simple plan covers one state
A desk	WeWork	Day pass from $39	Not built around founders
Your people	South Park Commons	Free residency, no equity	Deadlines pass fast
Office lunch	Forkable	Everyone picks their own meal	No public pricing

How we picked

We started with more than 70 names. For each one we checked the company's own site and recent press, and kept it only if it still operates in San Francisco and does what it claims. That cut Zeus Living, Sonder and Common (shut down), Outpost (no SF houses left), Bench (shut down in December 2024, relaunched for small businesses) and Pulley (shutting down December 8, 2026). Nobody paid to be on this list. Clera isn't on it either. We're the hiring platform at the bottom.

Visas and immigration

For you. The O-1A is the visa most of the firms below are built around. You need 3 of 8 criteria, and USCIS lists founding a distinguished startup as evidence of a critical role. Premium processing costs $2,965 and gets a decision in 15 business days.

For your hires. Two H-1B changes matter in 2026. Since February 27, the lottery is weighted by wage level: a registration at the top level gets four entries, the lowest gets one. Pay well and your odds go up. The $100,000 payment on new H-1B petitions was extended to September 2027, but federal courts have barred the government from enforcing it (USCIS, Vanderbilt ISSS). Appeals are pending, so check again before you file.

You're also hiring against sponsors. 55% of the San Francisco roles on Clera this month offer visa sponsorship, and our visa sponsor map counts 2,734 Bay Area employers behind 12,019 H-1B wage filings. If you need people abroad first, an employer of record gets them on payroll without a US visa.

• Founder Law (formerly Alcorn Immigration Law). Flat fees: $1,500 for a strategy session, $15,000 for a founder visa, government fees extra. Offices in Palo Alto and New York. The highest published price here, but you know the number on day one.
• Lighthouse. Published prices: O-1A $10,000, H-1B $4,500, no extra charge for a request for evidence. It isn't a law firm. Independent attorneys do the legal work.
• Manifest Law. O-1 from $6,999 flat on its entry tier, with payment plans. Based in Phoenix and New York, so expect video calls.
• Alma. Flat-rate O-1A for founders sponsoring themselves through their own startup, headquartered at 605 Market St. No prices online.
• Deel Immigration. Deel bought Legalpad in 2022. Free visa assessment. Makes the most sense if you already run payroll on Deel.
• Unshackled Ventures. A pre-seed fund for immigrant founders that handles visa filings for the companies it backs. Only portfolio founders get that help.

Housing

The rules. California caps a security deposit at one month's rent since July 2024, with an exception for small landlords. Most units built before June 13, 1979 are rent controlled, and the allowed increase through February 2027 is 1.6%. Newer buildings mostly aren't.

Never wire a deposit for a place you haven't seen. The SF Standard reported a renter losing $18,600 to a fake listing this summer. Per FTC data in the same piece, 51% of rental scams start on Facebook and 16% on Craigslist.

• Blueground. Furnished apartments with a 30-day minimum. Some utilities and parking can cost extra. When Zeus Living shut down in 2023, its landlords moved to Blueground.
• Furnished Finder. Monthly furnished rentals listed by owners, no booking fee for tenants.
• Zumper. The long-term search. On October 23 it showed 1,449 SF rentals at an average of $4,620.
• The Residency. Three-month founder cohorts with housing, coworking and a demo day, in four SF houses, including Pacific Heights. You can't hold a job during the cohort.
• HF0. A 12-week live-in residency for repeat founders in a mansion by Alamo Square. You're applying for an investment, not renting a room.

Where to look: Hayes Valley got the nickname "Cerebral Valley" for its AI hacker houses. Offices cluster in SoMa and Mission Bay.

Company paperwork: legal, accounting, payroll, banking

Incorporating in Delaware doesn't cover California. A Delaware C-corp working here files a Statement and Designation by Foreign Corporation ($100), then a Statement of Information ($25) within 90 days. It owes California's $800 minimum franchise tax, though new corporations skip it in their first taxable year. And anyone doing business in the city registers with the SF Treasurer within 30 days, from $55 plus a $4 state fee.

Incorporation and law firms

• Stripe Atlas. $500 once for a Delaware C-corp, state fees, EIN and 83(b) filing included. The registered agent is $100 a year after year one.
• Clerky. $427 pay-per-use incorporation, or $819 for the lifetime package with hiring and fundraising paperwork.
• Cooley and Gunderson Dettmer. Both have large startup practices and SF offices. Gunderson says its Northern California team is outside counsel to 1,300+ companies. No published rates. Fenwick and Wilson Sonsini also have SF offices.

Accounting

• Pilot. Bookkeeping from $99 a month, C-corp tax from $2,450 a year. It says it isn't a CPA firm.
• Kruze Consulting. An SF CPA firm for VC-backed Delaware C-corps, from pre-seed onward. Bookkeeping, tax, R&D credits and 409A work. Monthly packages start at $650.
• Fondo. A YC company doing startup bookkeeping, corporate tax and R&D credits.

Payroll and HR

• Gusto. $49 a month plus $6 a person on the Simple plan. Employees in a second state means upgrading.
• Rippling. Payroll, HR, IT and spend in one place, from $8 per employee per month plus a base fee it quotes.
• Deel. Contractors from $49 a month, employer of record from $599 per employee per month. Handy, until headcount grows.

Banking and spend

• Mercury. Plans from $0. It's a fintech, not a bank: deposits sit with partner banks, with up to $5M in FDIC coverage through sweep networks. Its own bank charter got preliminary approval in April 2026.
• Brex. Corporate cards and spend software, owned by Capital One since April 7, 2026. Essentials is free.
• First Citizens Innovation Banking. This is SVB, renamed on October 6, 2026. It's a division of First Citizens Bank. Same bank, new name.
• Ramp. Cards and spend management with a free plan. Headquartered in New York.

Cap table. Carta Launch is free for small cap tables: under 25 stakeholders and up to $1M raised. If you're on Pulley, it shuts down December 8, 2026, so move your cap table before then. While you're setting up equity, our guide to vesting, options and RSUs covers what to offer your first hires.

Coworking and founder communities

Desks

• WeWork. Seven SF buildings, including Salesforce Tower. Coworking from $289 a month, day passes from $39.
• Industrious. Managed offices at seven SF sites, with a SoMa location opening December 2026. No public pricing.
• Canopy. Design-led coworking at three SF locations, including Jackson Square and Fillmore St. From $445 a month, private offices from $2,000.
• SHACK15. A members' club in the Ferry Building where founders and VCs work and take meetings. Membership is by application. It's a club, not an office.
• Frontier Tower. Sixteen themed floors of frontier tech at 995 Market St, from $190 a month. Still new: its owners bought the building in 2025.

Communities and residencies

• South Park Commons. For technical founders still deciding what to build. The six-month residency is free and takes no equity. The Founder Fellowship is $400K for 7%.
• Founders, Inc.. A 42,000 sq ft campus at Fort Mason writing first checks of $100K to $250K into AI, hardware and robotics.
• a16z speedrun. Twelve weeks in person in North Beach, $500K for 10%. Applications for the February 2027 cohort close November 1, 2026.
• Y Combinator. $500K: $125K for 7% plus $375K on an uncapped MFN SAFE. The Winter 2027 deadline is November 2. Startup School is free and online.
• Cerebral Valley. The AI builder community. Its weekly events newsletter reaches 80,000+ founders and engineers, and its hackathons follow model launches.
• Luma. Where most SF tech events get posted. Subscribe to the calendar, then RSVP early, because the good ones waitlist.

Plan around SF Tech Week too. It ran October 5 to 11 this year, hundreds of events in one week.

Food delivery and office catering

• ZeroCater. Managed recurring catering for offices, Bay Area included. No public pricing.
• ezCater. A marketplace for catering from local restaurants. Uber agreed to buy it for $2.3B on October 6 and plans to bring catering into Uber Eats. The deal is still pending.
• Forkable. Recurring team lunches where each person picks their own meal and it arrives labeled. Works with Slack.
• DoorDash for Business. Meal budgets, vouchers and group orders on one company account, no setup fee.
• Uber for Business. Meals and rides on one account. Vouchers are charged only when someone uses them.
• Instacart Business. Snacks, groceries and supplies with no minimums. No catering.

Other essentials

• DMV. Get a California license within 10 days of becoming a resident, and register your car within 20.
• Transit. Tap a contactless card on Muni and BART. Muni is $2.85. Waymo is open to anyone in the city, no waitlist. The bike share is now Lyft Bike, formerly Bay Wheels.
• Health insurance. Moving to California opens a 60-day window on Covered California. Open enrollment runs November 1, 2026 to January 31, 2027.

What to do first

• Before you fly: start the visa, book a furnished month, line up health insurance.
• Week one: Clipper or a contactless card, a WeWork day pass, the Luma calendar.
• First 30 days: SF business registration, California foreign qualification, a bank account, the DMV.
• When you're ready to hire: read when to make your first hires and check what startup engineers earn before you write an offer.

Sources

• USCIS: H-1B cap season
• USCIS: O-1 visa
• SF Treasurer: register a business
• California FTB: corporations
• SF.gov: rental laws
• Covered California: 2027 rates and enrollment

For more on the hiring side, here's our startup hiring reading list.

Once you have a desk and a bank account, the next problem is your first hire. 245,000 candidates are on Clera, and Bay Area startups bid on the ones they want. Meet candidates on Clera.