Daniel Lurie, Running for Mayor of San Francisco

Daniel Lurie is currently running for mayor of San Francisco. Prior to running for mayor, he was the founder and CEO of Tipping Point Community, a charitable organization that distributed over $30 million to organizations fighting poverty throughout the Bay Area last year.  

In this episode of World of DaaS, Daniel discusses tackling crime, homelessness and cost of living in San Francisco. He breaks down the structural factors in the city’s governance and explains how they’re enabling corruption and inefficiency. In particular, Daniel outlines how he would reform the city’s massive $700 million homelessness efforts to better support drug recovery.

Daniel and Auren also discuss Daniel’s background in philanthropy in New York and San Francisco. Daniel shares his insights on what makes a charity effective and efficient, and how he evaluates charities. They also discuss the impact of ranked choice voting, and how it changes campaigning. 

World of DaaS is brought to you by SafeGraph & Flex Capital. For more episodes, visit worldofdaas.buzzsprout.com, and follow us @WorldOfDaaS. 

You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Daniel on X at @DanielLurie

Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com)

Transcript

Auren Hoffman: 0:02

Welcome to the World of DaaS. A show for data enthusiasts. I'm your host, Auren Hoffman, ceo of SafeGraph and GPFlex Capital. For more conversations, videos and transcripts visit Safegraph.com slash podcast.

Auren Hoffman: 0:17

Hello, fellow data nerds. My guest today is Daniel Lurie. Daniel is currently running for mayor of the city and county of San Francisco. Prior to that, he was the founder and CEO of Tipping Point Community, a charitable organization that has distributed over $30 million dollar storeizations, fighting poverty throughout the Bay Area last year. Daniel, welcome to World of DaaS. Thanks, warren, it's good to see you, great to see you as well. Now the first normal question is running for mayor is not the most normal thing that people do. Why do you decide to do it? Why now?

Daniel Lurie: 0:47

It's definitely the first question I always get and people are like what are you thinking? And I got to tell you it's because I love this city, I love this town. You know me? I'm raising two young kids with my wife, becca. I want them to be as proud to be from San Francisco as I've always been. I want all of our kids to feel that way, and right now, the direction that we're heading leaves me worried that they won't have that same sense of pride that I've always had. You know this you travel the world and you travel around the country and you say you're from San Francisco. Now people are like are you okay, are you safe? And things are definitely overblown in some instances and others we have real problems, and I believe it starts with leadership. We do not have a crisis of resources. We have a crisis of leadership in this city, and I believe that I have a track record of getting big things done, bringing a diverse group of people together in many different instances that we can get into, and serving the city and the people of this city really well, and so that's one of the reasons I'm running.

Auren Hoffman: 1:47

I don't think there's anyone in the world who thinks San Francisco is well run as a city. Why is that the case? Is there something endemic to it? Is there something structural that makes it very difficult to make it well run? Why is it the case?

Daniel Lurie: 2:01

Right now. We need commission reform and we need charter reform. We absolutely need some stronger levers. People point to district elections right now as being an issue for governance in the city, and I buy into that to a certain degree. We've got 11 supervisors city council members for many other people, but here we're a city and a county, so they're called supervisors. They're 11 and they're voted in in their own little districts, so they don't necessarily have a citywide mindset. That's an issue. We have 130 commissions. People don't even know how many we have, but we think it's somewhere around 130. By the way, all the people that I'm running against have helped build up that bureaucracy and it is a broken system. That benefits insiders. It benefits politicians, because guess what they get to say it's not my fault, it's somebody else's fault, it's the commission's fault, it's the DA's fault, it's the police's fault. So there's a lot of built-in reasons for these politicians to make excuses. But having said that, we still have a pretty strong mayor system. You have the ability. This mayor has actually appointed not one but two district attorneys. The PUC had a city attorney, four supervisors, three school board members. The mayor does put on the table a $14.6 billion budget and the board of supervisors fights over 0.2% of it. It's a bureaucratic mess, there's no question, but it starts with accountability, of which we have none. We got a whole lot of our department heads accountable and then we got to hold the nonprofits that are doing the majority of the services in our community accountable, and it's something that I've experienced doing and I'll bring that level of accountability to City Hall next year.

Auren Hoffman: 3:42

Are there cities that you point to like wow, this is a good recipe or a good model for us to copy.

Daniel Lurie: 3:48

In different areas. If you're talking about homelessness, everyone is talking about Houston and what they've been able to do their land use policy, obviously different. New York City is an example that I point to and we all know had real struggles in the 70s and 80s and turned itself around, and I think that came from strong leadership and a willingness to hold people accountable, be tough and move the city forward. So I look at things that New York is doing well, especially post COVID. They've done some things better than we have in San Francisco, houston. On the homelessness front, we got real climate emergency that we talk about. We're building a big seawall here. In the next decade it's going to be north of $10 billion. Let's go talk to New Orleans and see what they learned after Hurricane Katrina. We should be going out and seeking out what is best in cities, not only in this country but around the world, and I will do that.

Auren Hoffman: 4:41

You mentioned homelessness earlier. That is probably the thing that people most associate with the bad parts of San Francisco, and it doesn't seem like compassionate to let these people live on the street. Or some of them seem like they have a lot of mental health challenges. Some of them are struggling with substance abuse and need a lot of help. How do we change the way we think about it? Because to me, just going through, it just seems everyone almost doesn't even care about these people and there's a lot of structures set up to benefit financially from it. But how do we actually solve it and make it better for these people?

Daniel Lurie: 5:14

As you, just pointed out, there's nothing progressive about what we're seeing on the streets of San Francisco. We have to build the beds and we're spending $700 million a year on the continuum of care. So that goes from harm reduction, which is providing people safe materials to use drugs, to all the way to recovery. So of that $700 million, $680 million is spent on harm reduction, $20 on recovery. It blows the mind. Now you need to keep them alive, but you need to have recovery options for people, which means you need to build the capacity. You need to build the beds, whether it's shelter beds, which we need more of, or it's mental health and drug treatment beds. We have failed to build those beds.

Auren Hoffman: 5:57

Why it seems like we spend so much money. Why can't we just get these guys in bed and not just in a bed? Give them some help, actually help them.

Daniel Lurie: 6:05

I think we got driven by ideology that people should have the ability to do what they want and that we lost control. We lost control of our streets. It's not safe for people who are living in the tents, who are dying on our streets, and it's not safe for families trying to walk their kids to school. So we've lost on all fronts and once again, there's nothing progressive about living. 806 people died of overdoses here in San Francisco last year 806. It's an emergency and we're not acting like it. We haven't been acting like it. We had billboards up. This administration and the Department of Public Health had billboards up until late 2022 that said when you do drugs, do them with friends so you don't overdose. That was what this administration put up on billboards Last year. They got the message and said don't do drugs, they kill you. Fentanyl has changed the game. It's not something that you see much of in the East Coast. It is so insanely deadly that we have to change how we think about it, and that means that we have to have more recovery options. I went to the Salvation Army, lauren. I spoke to a group of 85 people in recovery on Friday morning. It was a really inspiring morning. I learned a lot from them. People want help. They want to get off these drugs. There's been no beds, so Salvation Army actually has come up with a program called the Way Out campaign where they build the beds. You need longer term treatment beds and just be 30 days. They got to be 90 days, six months, and then you got to have step down beds so people go three months or six months and then they can go to a transitional living facility where they can get back on their feet. We know what works. We just need to build those beds. We need to get the trains, mental health and drug clinicians there. We have the money.

Auren Hoffman: 7:49

Is it just an ideology that's stopping it, or is there people benefiting from this money? Is there some graph that's stopping, because it seems like so obvious that we need to make these changes and they've been going on for so long?

Daniel Lurie: 8:01

What I would say is we're seeing changes in San Francisco. We're coming back. There's this knock on us on the East Coast, but we're coming back. We're making changes. We have a DA now that really is focused on prosecuting crime. We have places like the Salvation Army thinking differently about recovery. We are going to have changes in the November election. There's going to be sweeping changes in the leadership of this city. That's why I'm running for mayor. We're going to win this race and we're going to bring back common sense and some rationality to our politics. People are hungry for it. What I'm seeing, or in every night, people are like oh Daniel, I get 30 people, 40 people who come listen to you, and 50 or 60 are showing up early. There was a poll yesterday that came up, since 68% of San Franciscans are paying really close attention to this race. Eight months out, people are frustrated, they're angry, but they're also wanting to be part of the solution. I really believe and know that our best days are ahead of us. I'm excited to lead that charge. I'm excited to lead that charge. I'm excited to lead that charge.

Auren Hoffman: 10:44

I'm excited to lead that charge. I'm excited to lead that charge.

Daniel Lurie: 11:27

I'm excited to lead that charge. I'm excited to lead that charge. I'm excited to lead that charge. So I have three priorities that I talk about every day. Safety is my number one priority. The citizens of San Francisco right now do not feel safe in many parts of the city, especially downtown Obviously you hear about the Tenderloin and South Market or we should have around 1,965 police officers. During COVID, the mayor and the board of supervisors got rid of this thing called the mandatory minimum staffing levels. We're down below 1,300 police officers sworn officers at this point we're down at least 600, we might be down 700 officers out of what should be around 2,000. We need to aggressively recruit police officers. We need to retain police officers and we can't just talk about public safety, like some of my opponents are doing during an election year. This mayor and the board of supervisors all voted and announced that they wanted to defund the police. That is a long tail in terms of the morale of the police. We need to come up with some creative incentives to recruit police officers, because this is a nationwide issue, as you know. Let's talk about making sure we get people housing subsidies or childcare subsidies. Let's think differently about it. 80% of our police officers live outside of San Francisco. The more you have police officers that live and work and are part of the community, that speak the language of the communities that they are serving, the more neighborhoods feel safe, to your point.

Auren Hoffman: 14:10

But it's hard to raise a family in San Francisco on a police officer's salary.

Daniel Lurie: 14:16

It is, but, frankly, police officers are making decent money at this point now, as you know, san Francisco is just completely unaffordable for the vast majority, but that's where we need to build more housing. I'm focused on building more housing for our teachers, our nurses, our firefighters and our police the backbone of our city, that makes this city go and that will help keep us safe, whether it's an earthquake or some other natural disaster. We're gonna have an issue with emergency response, with 80% of our first responders living outside of San Francisco, so we gotta think about building more housing, more housing for those people that are making $150,000, $200, $250,000 a year.

Auren Hoffman: 14:55

I know I come from a federal law enforcement family and in the federal law enforcement world San Francisco is seen as a hardship post. It seemed nobody wants to get transferred there because it's so expensive and the schools aren't very good and so often they have to drive an hour and a half to get to work so they can raise their family in a way that they wanna be able to do. That. That doesn't seem like something that's easy to solve. Or is there something we can do with the schools or something to help that?

Daniel Lurie: 15:21

We need to have housing for our teachers. You're right. Our public school system has been failing our kids for a long time. There are some bright spots. We're also seeing the politics at the school board level come down to a low simmer, whereas before we recall three school board members. So things have improved on that front. We just got a vote to reinstate algebra in eighth grade which is mind boggling to think that we weren't teaching algebra to eighth graders.

Auren Hoffman: 15:46

And what's the reasoning? Why do people say algebra is bad or something I don't understand? Why did algebra ever do?

Daniel Lurie: 15:51

anything to you. It once again we got. This ideology took hold in the city over the last five, six years. We just we forgot who we should be focused on, that we lost focus. And it should be on the students, and it should be about raising standards. And it should be about how do we set them up for success. How do we bring everybody up instead of oh, let's reduce the standards for everyone in the name of equity. And by doing that, we're failing everybody. So, like I said, the school board just voted six to one to reinstate algebra in eighth grade. It's a step. It's a small step, but it's the right step. We're starting to turn things around.

Auren Hoffman: 16:27

It does seem to me that there's this tale of two cities in San Francisco. If you're rich, you can have your own private police force, you can go to private schools that were open during COVID, and then, if you're less wealthy, you have to deal with a lot more crime. The schools weren't open during COVID 2020, 2021 year. You had to keep your kids at home the whole year, which is probably terrible for their learning, for their mental health, et cetera. It seems like so many things here in San Francisco is made to hurt the less fortunate and is still beautiful, so the more fortunate to get to benefit from it.

Daniel Lurie: 17:01

It seems almost anti-progressive, I think you've said it well and that's why I'm running. I started this organization called Tipping Point, focused on fighting poverty. As you mentioned my whole career. I had choices I could have made with my life that would have been different, but for me, service and lifting up communities, especially low-end communities, and providing everyone with an opportunity is part of my DNA and that's what gets me going each day and that's why I've taken my role from Tipping Point and I want to be mayor because I want to serve everybody in San Francisco I believe everybody in San Francisco. If you live in the Excelsior Bayview or out in the Richmond or sunset, you should have the same opportunities as someone living in Jackson Square or in Pacific Heights, and we've forgotten that. And our political class, Oren, our political class thinks that all the taxpayers and all the residents are there to serve them. When I'm mayor, it's gonna be clear from the moment I take office that the politicians, the elected class, is here to serve the people and that is going to pay dividends for everybody in San Francisco. We gotta get more housing built. We gotta make sure our public transportation system is running more effectively and efficiently. We gotta get our public schools going. This is hard, this is not gonna be easy. I'm not making any grand promises that we're gonna fix things in three months, but we're coming back and we're coming all the way back.

Auren Hoffman: 18:23

It seems as an outsider to get things done in a city like San Francisco. There's a lot of unsavory. Things have to happen. There's some corruption, there's back scratching, there's back room deal making, which personified maybe why somebody like Willie Brown was so good at getting things done, whether people grew with him or not, because he was a creature of that. You don't seem like the type of person who wants to do back room deals and is going to play with the corruption and stuff like that. My experience with you extremely upstanding person, extremely ethical type of person. How does someone like you actually get things done in this type of city?

Daniel Lurie: 19:00

You shine a light on that corruption that you talk about. People are so tired of it or in this is why we're going to win in November is people are tired of the insider stuff. They see the corruption, they know what's happening and the city's not working. You always say people will tolerate a little corruption if things get done. Well, there's massive amounts of corruption. You see the FBI and the feds indicting people almost on a weekly basis right now and the city's not working. So people are like we got to start fresh, and that means taking a look at every single department, making sure that we have key metrics, that we hold our department heads accountable, we hold our nonprofits accountable. It's something I know how to do very well. You make sure all of our nonprofits that we're funding at the city level are being held to account on four or five key metrics. They have audits each year and we're going to do the same for our departments. And when you shine a light, you bring in the cameras, you bring in the media to say, okay, why is it taking two years for a small business or an ice cream shopper or bakery to get its permits from eight different departments? It shouldn't. You shouldn't have to pay a permanent expediter to open up a small business in this city. Every small business owner that I talk to tells me about the struggles they've had to either improve their facility or just the same business and all the small little taxes that are happening. And they know that at the end of the day it's not benefiting them, it's benefiting city hall. And so this message, this outsider message about holding people accountable, getting big things done like I did at Tipping Point I've gotten housing built in the city. I brought Super Bowl 50 here brought $240 million worth of economic revenue to this city and region. People look at me and they're like all right, this guy knows how to get things done and he's going to do what he says he's going to do.

Auren Hoffman: 20:46

There's these little paper cut things that, as a citizen, are so annoying. You see this it costs $1.7 million for a toilet in Noe Valley and then, even if, once they get the money, they can't get it done and there's still no toilet there. You just see these things going over and over and over again, or a little ramp going on to a road or something, and that can't get done. It just seems like all these roadblocks are happening everywhere and as someone from the outside, I can't figure out. Why is it so hard? Even if you want to get a tiny permit for your home or your, as you mentioned, a retailer and you want to add to your space to make it a little bit nicer or something like that, it could take many years to actually move, unless you're willing to pay a bribe or something. Many, many years to actually move some of these things along. Why is it so hard?

Daniel Lurie: 21:31

They want it like that. They built it Everyone, everyone. It allows them to say, oh yeah, it's so bureaucratic, I had nothing to do with it. But all the people, especially the people I'm running against, they're all part of building up this system. That allows them to make excuses and say, oh, it's that commission's fault or it's that department's fault. They never say it's my fault. And so the one thing I want to be clear to the people listening here and I say this every night and every day when I'm out, when something goes wrong in the city, it's going to be my fault. I'm the mayor, I'm in charge, and we don't hear that. We don't hear that from our elected class, and I'm not just picking on San Francisco politicians, we hear it now nationwide. It's always somebody else's fault, and that's why people are so tired and excited about someone from the outside coming in, shining a light on the problems, explaining to people walking them through what happened to make this a $1.7 million bathroom that still, by the way, has not gotten done. And people are angry, people are demanding answers, and what is exciting about this moment in San Francisco is everybody's involved. Everybody's engaged, everybody's hired up, and I'm good at harnessing that energy. I did it tipping point for 15 years, did it with Super Bowl. I'm at harness this energy so that not only are we going to have change at the ballot box in November, but we're going to keep this energy going so we can improve the things that you've mentioned Now you're an outsider, but you're not exactly a populist.

Auren Hoffman: 23:01

You come from a storied, extremely wealthy family with long roots in the history. What do you say to your detractors who derived you as just being part of the Lucky Sperm Club?

Daniel Lurie: 23:11

Well that last time my parents got divorced when I was two. My dad's a rabbi and helped tens of thousands of Jews flee persecution in the 80s and 90s. My mom's always been focused on early childhood education because we know that when a child gets off the right start they do better their entire lives. And my mom remarried my stepfather who was part of the Levi Strauss family and I love that. I'm affiliated with that company. I mean that company has got San Francisco values at its core. It's progressive, it's about being not only a good business but a good community member. So I learned a tremendous amount growing up with my stepfather here in San Francisco, learning that business can be a force for good, that you can be a champion of civil rights and LGBTQ rights and make money. So I take great pride in my affiliation and my long history with Levi's and I asked people. My daughter, orrin, came home from school one day and she was telling me about chance and choice and it's by chance that I grew up the way I did and the opportunities I was given. My parents always explained Daniel, you have a good, you got doors open for you that many others don't. So I've always pride myself on the choice that I've made with my life is to serve this community and to when that door is open. How many people can I bring along with me? How can I best serve communities throughout this city, throughout this region? And that's what I did with tipping point and I just I'm gonna ask the voters look at what I've done with the opportunities I've had and I think I'll put my track record of service up against anybody.

Auren Hoffman: 24:46

The tipping point is an odd charity, because it spends every dollar basically that it raises. Why is that so important?

Daniel Lurie: 24:52

We started tipping point in the model after the Robin Hood Foundation, new York City. I saw what Paul Tudor Jones did and that board was incredible. I worked there 2001 to 2003. And I was like, okay, I got to bring this back to the San Francisco Bay Area. I was part of my family's foundation, but you give money away as a family and you focus on early childhood education, which is what our family foundation has done. But what Robin Hood did is it brought different business leaders and civic leaders together to give back and I wanted that for the Bay Area. So I got Ronnie Lott involved, I got Chris James and Katie Page and the four of us founded it in 2005. And our model was we're gonna hold our groups accountable, we're gonna measure results, we're gonna help them get better at what they do, we're gonna bring the best in the business world to help them be more effective and efficient. And the model, as you pointed out, our board covers all operating expenses so that our donors know that when they give us $100 or $1 million, it's all going out the door the next year. So no endowment. It's a very hungry model. We have to be hungry. We have to prove ourselves each and every year, just like our nonprofit partners do. So that always kept us in a different mode, and I had to step down, lauren, when I launched this campaign. So I was chair of the board until just this past September. I stepped down as CEO in 2020 and then was executive chair for the next three years, and it's thriving, it's doing well, and it's because of that model where our board takes responsibility and ownership over covering all the overhead.

Auren Hoffman: 26:19

Now, in some ways, it's descendant from Robin Hood and everything. Well, you and I are both friends with Wes Moore, who ran the Robin Hood Foundation and now the governor of Maryland. What have you learned from Wes? Because I think he's really just an extraordinary person.

Daniel Lurie: 26:32

God Wes. He's the best, Very good looking, Very so. I tried to learn from him on that front. But Wes and I had a great relationship when he took over as CEO and I had some good long meals together and I shared my experiences. Starting tipping point, his different coming in and being someone that had to take over for a founder. It's a different challenge, but that man is just committed. He's committed to serving. You knew he was going places right away. His career is just incredible and you can just see the people of Maryland responded. So what did I learn from Wes? I learned that you got to work every single day and if you're committed to community, if you're committed to public service, you're going places. You and I both know he was always going places and probably not done just at governor.

Auren Hoffman: 27:19

Now the nonprofit sector spends, I think, $1.4 trillion every year, but a lot of people see the nonprofit world as very slow moving, not innovative, dominate by politics or really not as impactful as it could be. What would you say to that?

Daniel Lurie: 27:34

I'd say that's the case in some cases and that's what we bought against right from day one, a tipping point, and that is that we believe that we should be an incubator for new ideas, take risk. We always thought of our money as risk capital and that if something then works, that we could hand it off to the government to scale, because that's where you scale your impact and your effects on people. One example we got a building built. I built a building on time under budget, using good, paying union labor. We built it with this company called FactoryOS. It was modular, built Three years, $377,000 a unit. There's a 146 unit building here. It's awesome and we handed that off to the mayor, this administration, and they haven't done anything with it, and that's how we can get housing built more quickly. We always pried ourselves on taking shots and risk with our dollars, and our board was always supportive of that, and I think we need to see more of that in the philanthropic sector.

Auren Hoffman: 28:28

Now, overall in the US, corporate giving as a percentage of profits has declined massively. I think it's declined 50% over the last 15 years. Do you think there's some more civic responsibility that corporations should be doing?

Daniel Lurie: 28:40

Absolutely Always. I was always pushing for that and I got to tell you that the people that were really heavily engaged in this city Ron Conway, mark Benioff always admired that. They put their money where their mouth was during my time running tipping point. But I was also a little discouraged because there weren't a lot of other civic and business leaders that were doing as much as they could. What I'm seeing in San Francisco now is really exciting because there's a whole new batch of business leaders getting involved, whether their politics are your politics or not. We got ahead of Y Combinator Gary Tan getting active in San Francisco. Ron and Mark are still involved. Chris Larson is actively involved. This guy, hamid Mogadhan, is starting a business group. I'm seeing a level of engagement from the business leadership in this community of which I didn't see for the last 10 or 15 years. So that's inspiring and once again, they're going to have different points of view. We're not going to always agree, but more civic engagement from the business community, from the tech community, is needed and that's what's going to help turn this city around.

Auren Hoffman: 29:43

You mentioned Gary Tann and from this audience obviously I know Gary very well. As the head of Y Combinator. He does seem to be one of the more vocal people he's out there. He's talking about the issues, talking about solutions. Maybe people aren't as smart as him or aren't as influential as him, but want to help. What can people learn from Gary? Get involved.

Daniel Lurie: 30:03

You have a voice. I've talked to a lot of people young entrepreneurs, young tech entrepreneurs that are like, oh, I have a voice. I think for years people just kept their head down and were like I'm building a company, I'm thinking about how to handle my employees, I'm going to let the politics take care of itself or the philanthropy take care of itself. You got to get engaged, you got to get active. We were able to do a really good job recruiting people at tipping point. Our board is always incredible and still is incredible what I think this new crop of tech leaders and business leaders is showing us. You got to have a voice. You got to stand up and say, okay, I'm going to get involved in the future of this city, because I think it was the lack of engagement that allowed our city to slide, because there wasn't that balance, there wasn't that presence that I think we missed as a city. Get involved, use your voice, make sure you vote this guy, manny and I. He runs Manny's Cafe. In the Mission, he and I did something called the Civic Joy Fund. We were like well, the city's not getting as active as we'd like and the business community is struggling. We got people giving. Chris Larson was part of it, the Fisher family's part of it. We got trash pickups going every weekend. We did art projects. We got five companies like Visa and Levi's and others to adopt a block and take over a street one in the tenderloin, for example and have your employees go frequent those businesses, those small businesses in that part of town. Those are things that tech companies can do. I'd love to see people like Sam Altman get his company more involved. They're going to be a force here in San Francisco. There's different ways to get involved, but I'm excited about what I'm seeing out there from our business leaders.

Auren Hoffman: 31:48

There are also these parent groups that are springing up, like the SF Parent Coalition, meredith Dodson. What do you think of some of those types of things that are happening?

Daniel Lurie: 31:56

I love it. Meredith really spoke out for parents during COVID and during the shutdown. They've had a real impact on getting the focus back on students, making sure our teachers are getting paid on time. We have this debacle with our payment system that we're struggling to pay our teachers. It's absurd. We got to get back to focusing on student outcomes, making sure our teachers are well supported, and people like Meredith are exactly what I was talking about. They're energizing a whole new group of people that were not otherwise engaged.

Auren Hoffman: 32:26

It's funny because I know Meredith. I've known her for a long time and I don't think she was engaged in the city and then just something happened. Oh wow, we need to stand up for our kids, we need to do some more, and then people get more engaged. In some ways, that's good. It's great to have people more involved. In some ways, the reason why they're getting more involved is because things are so broken.

Daniel Lurie: 32:43

I was just at something earlier this morning where someone was trying to sound the alarm about the real estate market and the commercial real estate three or four years ago, and they had a talk with a board of supervisors who was like, okay, there was not alarms going off amongst our elected officials, they were going off amongst parents and teachers and everyday citizens. Our elected class failed us. They really failed us over the last few years. We all see it, we all know it. What gets born out of a system that is broken, where you have elected leaders that have allowed these problems to fester for so long, is you start seeing people taking power into their own hands and saying, okay, no one's coming to save us, we got to come save ourselves. That's what gets me so excited about the future of this city is we have different people like Meredith, like the leaders that we were just mentioning, saying, no, I'm here and my voice matters and I'm going to get involved.

Auren Hoffman: 33:34

This is great. Last couple of questions. I think you'll almost certainly have to answer this question in almost every interview, but what is your favorite restaurant in San Francisco?

Daniel Lurie: 33:43

Oh God, I just went to Atlanta's in West Portal last night. It's a new one by the family that does original Joe's and it was awesome it was packed out there. It was a Wednesday night, two hour wait to get in, so there was a good vibe, good energy there.

Auren Hoffman: 33:58

West.

Daniel Lurie: 33:58

Portal is a lot of fun.

Auren Hoffman: 33:59

Actually, it's a place that maybe people who live in San Francisco know about. People who visit San Francisco don't really go to West Portal.

Daniel Lurie: 34:05

No, but West Portal is doing well. It's old school San Francisco and if you like original Joe's, you're going to love the Lennas, so go check that out. It's a new one and I got some other place, but my go to is always Gordo's or La Taqueria, in terms of my Perrillo choices.

Auren Hoffman: 34:21

I'm a yank sing person myself. That's my number one place in San Francisco, but you can't go wrong with all the hundreds of restaurants there. All right, last question we ask all of our guests what conventional wisdom or advice do you think is generally the best?

Daniel Lurie: 34:33

Generally bad advice, oh my goodness, I think you might have told me this that's bad advice. Well, in this town they say being an outsider is harmful. That's going to be proven wrong in November.

Auren Hoffman: 34:47

It is such an insider place. San Francisco the way people think about San Francisco is it's built for outsiders because of the tech boom and all those people who came there were outsiders and they created something about politics of San Francisco is such an insider community.

Daniel Lurie: 35:02

And we're going to prove that wrong in November. The one piece of advice that I would say that I do take the conventional wisdom that does work for me is do what you love, and you got to tell you I told you this before we started I'm loving running for mayor of my hometown. I mean, it's an honor and I'm learning new things every day about a city that I know pretty well, but I'm getting to know them on a whole new level and I'm loving loving this.

Auren Hoffman: 35:26

Awesome. Well, thank you, daniel Lurie, for joining us on World of Dast Stay safe on the campaign, and I follow you at Daniel Lurie on Twitter. I definitely encourage our listeners to engage with you there.

Daniel Lurie: 35:36

Thank you, lauren, it's good to see you.

Auren Hoffman: 35:40

If you're a super data nerd, go to worldofdastcom that's D-A-A-S, worldofdastcom and sign up for our weekly data as a service roundup newsletter. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed the show, consider reading this podcast and leaving a review. For more World of Dast and Dast is D-A-A-S.

Auren Hoffman: 36:02

You can subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcast or anywhere you get your podcasts and also check out YouTube for videos.

Auren Hoffman: 36:09

You can find me at Twitter at atoran. That's A-U-R-E-N. Oran, and we'd love to hear from you.

Auren Hoffman: 36:17

World of Dast is brought to you by Safegraph. Safegraph is geospatial data for physical places. Check it out at safegraphcom. And by Flex Capital. Flex Capital vests and data companies like those we talk about at World of Dast. Check it out at FlexCapitalcom.