[laughs] announcer: take time to be a dad today.

>> hi. hi name is tiffany, and i do our internal p.r. here, and i want to thank all of you for coming to our new offices. we are excited to be here. we are thrilled to have the mayor with us today and the president of the board of supervisors, david chiu. we are going to tell you about the expansion here things going on. i am going to defer to our c.e.o. to tell you what is going on. >> thank you. maybe i should put this up a little bit. first name, mikel. i have prepared a thing here. first of all, mayor, president chiu, welcome to the new home here on market straight. i am the c.e.o. and one of the founders of sandisk.

as you can tell, i am not from around here. i moved here from copenhagen two years ago. the first time i visited san francisco was in 1995, and it was a super inspirational trip for me. it sent me back to denmark with a dream and ambition to work with technology, web and the software. 12 years later, a few ventures, many companies later, i reunited with my two good friends and colleagues, and we got together to build this great start up called sandisk. two years later we moved our company, our families, our staffs and kids to san francisco to grow our business in one of the most vitea cities in the world. we were humbled by the

wonderful way we were welcomed to san francisco. this has put us on a very rapid growth path. for those of you who don't know, sandisk is cloud-based software, and we are the leading developer of cloud-based countries. we have over 100 companies using our software, like adobe, msnbc, grew upon and more. they trust us with their most valuable assets. today, we are 100 employees strong. earlier this summer we started to outgrow our office space, and as we explored new places to build and grow our company, we realized that the timing was right, and we were so fortunate that the city of san francisco had a bold and visionary plan

for this central market area. the payroll tax exclusion for this neighborhood is a great example of why san francisco is such an amazing place to grow a business. now look around you. here we ared too. i never dreamed that we would have such an amazing office in such an awesome location. i have been traveling personally for the last couple of weeks, so i haven't been part of the actual move, unfortunately. but as i walked to our new offices for the first time yesterday, i thought of my first visit back in 1995 and how lucky and privileged i am to call san francisco my home today. also, how honored i am to put my business right here. as you will tour the office today and join us for lunch -- which by the way is catered by a chinese group from 6th street, our good friends and neighbors. you will find that all of us here are proud to be citizens of a city that has the vision

and the ability to execute on that vision and make the entire city of san francisco a better -- maybe rather the best place in the world to live, to build a business and to work. in short, we are very thankful for the wonderful way we have been treated by the city of san francisco. in return, we are very proud and happy to help energize this up and coming neighborhood with so much potential. i have two final words for you. they mean thank you very much in danish. on behalf of all my current crew here and future employees of our company, the customers and all the people we are dedicated to help in this new neighborhood, thank you from the bottom of our hearts. [applause] >> and now, it is my great pleasure to introduce the mayor of san francisco. ed lee. >> congratulations to you and

all of your colleagues here, and your employees. i look around, and i want to make sure i recognize faces because i think these are going to be our new partners. david chiu and i, when we go to showdown with you after work well know who our partners are. congratulations to you. it has been a wonderful short period of time for this company to make such dramatic changes, but it is changes that san francisco has looked forward to for quite sometime. the company locating here right in central market at the invitation that -- david chiu and i worked hard along with supervisor kim in creating the payroll tax exemption corridor, if you will. the company has not only taken advantage of that, but in locating here from their original space on county send

street, when they started a couple of years back, when they started, they had about 1,000 customers. today it over 5,000 customers -- almost 10,000 customers. these are customers reaching out and reaching them on online help desk, yoob web 2.0. i don't profess to know. maybe david knows about all the programs out there that people need help on that are going on, but people do need forward-looking help on the web to be able to navigate that and determine how it can help their business, their own communications and so forth. so the forward-facing help has contributed. it is a wonderful contribution to the business world. at the same time, it is a huge contribution to what we are trying to do in central market. this is yet the second major announcement, along with many others we have announced.

the work force here i think is excited because it is not just the company that will take advantage of the payroll exemmingts, but doctor payroll exemption, but there are other things. they are happy to be here because they see the changes. the arts world is up the block, the burning man, the great arts foundation we have located here, the synergy, revitalizing store fronts with the arts, the performing arts that we have created with the office of demick development. that office is here representing all the things we have been doing in addition to the payroll tax exemption. that is only one aspect. we started with d.p.w., a 15-member advisory committee with a grant from caltrans.

a $250,000 grant to really start the better streets initiative here and how we can make sure that 25%, which i think is right, of your work force currently rides to work every day, and make sure these dedicated green lanes are still there, and whether we can figure out more dedicated ways to get some of their south bay employees to ride safely from the caltrans site over to market street. same with the other employees, the ability to use the public transportation, not to have the hassle of vehicles at the same time. that helps with central market. we have many programs going along. we are still working with redevelopment, seeing whether or not we can develop a redevelopment overlay on this new future tax increment, the kinds of things we want to do to help make this area attractive, along with the

arts, along with the payroll tax incentives. and then we have a development fund to help small businesses. i mentioned earlier that the show dogs and the food trucks are here for the employees. i know a lot of them go to the food trucks as they arrive on a weekly basis. but also we've got pearl's deluxe burgers opening up, and they have been benefiting from the low interest loans for starting up here. others have gotten loans as well. the efforts that we are making, which is multi-disciplinary, using the arts, financial incentives, the payroll tax incentives, at the same time making sure we make decisions at city hall to keep the economic vitality of the city strong so people and companies like sandisk can make

investment here, and be able to grow from 1,000 people to over 10,000 people. this office is not only contributing to its existence here, but at the same time they are going to be leasing 35,000 square feet here to grow from their current 100 employees to, by the end of the year we are expecting about 150 employees. is that right? >> yes. >> so they are already growing as we speak, and they are growing it right here in such a market. so i think all of the things that we have done in working collaboratively with our board of supervisors in making sure that every step of the way is inviting, that is embracing of the small businesses to come in, that they are the new employers in the city, that they are welcomed and make a long-term commitment right down to the details. he said earlier they are going to make a long-term investment

because they are talking about b building. they are already working with the city to make sure that happens. there is a long-term commitment here to grow, to stay and make central market the place we want to make it, more vibrant to the employees, safe as well, diverse with the food and art works. i am happy to be here. we are going to be announcing other things today. we have the online applications for other companies that want to move into central market. then i think i am going to dive into maybe being the first voice on a help desk today? >> yes. >> rather than ribbon-cutting, i am actually going to answer a question from somebody calling in. i can't think of another better way, apart from having a beer with you at showdown later, than by actually participating

in the business of the company. i look forward to doing that in a few minutes. [applause] >> good morning. i am david chiu, president of the san francisco board of supervisors, and i am delighted to be a part of the unveiling of an amazing san francisco story. our city was founded on the backs of innovators that came here in the 1849 gold rush. and then you fast forward to that first dot come era, and all the innovators who came there. there is that next revolution, and it's wonderful to help usher in this company. as i was biking over this morning, i thought about 11 years ago when i actually was running a small tech company literally half a block from here. it was a time when we had very few innovators who wanted to come to the central market area. to be honest, many of my

employees didn't really enjoy coming to work in this neighborhood, and they want us to move, as we eventually did, to the financial district. but things are changing, and i want to thank all the staff from oewd, who have been working around this vision for several years. last year i had a denver nuggets with jennifer about how we wanted to think about a tax incentive in this area. we had no idea at that time, though, of the existence of a company like this, or twitter, or others who would come and be the nucleus of a part of the city that has been blithed for a long time. i think you are an appropriate company for san francisco not only because of the green, not only because of the head phones on the buddha, but i can tell you, and i know the mayor probably agrees with me on this. as we sit as our desks at city

hall, not so dozen. i hope they can help us in city government to think about how we can create a 21st century city government that provides services to our citizens the way that the private sector does. we may not be using ruby on rails or the various back end technology that you have, but it is my hope some day that our own help desk and service connections will parallel the types of things this company is doing. i love the international dimension to the story of this company. he was talking about how he was first inspired to create a company like this during his time here in san francisco. i want to mention to all the cyclists here in san francisco, last year we set a goal for the set of 20% of our trips by

bicycle. the inspiration came when i was biking in copenhagen last year. that is a country that has a biking culture. it actually addressed to the economic success of denmark. when you have employees who are healthy, when you have employees, who are getting to work on time, who are actually enjoying their trips, they help to move forward a workforce and the successes of the local economy. it is my hope, and i know mayor lee shares this, that we will have a transit type city to ensure that san francisco res mains on the map of an international economy that parallels none in the world. welcome to san francisco, and it is great to be here among all the folks here who are quite zen here at zendex. >> with that, we would like to open it up to the press if you

have any questions about today's announcement. >> your announcement of the new website -- >> amy is here at well to answer that. we have a website where you can actually lift the application for payroll tax exemption, an application for your business if you wish to be within this zone. that is an online ability. i think you can access it by -- come on up, amy. >> amy cohen, director of business development. the website has the tax exclusion application. it also has a space location service through a partnership with rofo.com. it is actually free to list

space for lease and free to search for space for lease. it also has news, events and other things related to central market. it is the one-stop shop for everything happening in this neighborhood. >> how do you envision it being used? >> i envision it being used by, offense, companies that are interested in moving here, that have heard about it, that might normally call us. you are still welcome to call us, but we can also direct you to a site that has a number of listings of space available. i hope that property owners and brokers would use it as well, although there are other services out there of. this will be free for them to post any space available on central market. those are two examples. but it is also for folks who want to go to arts events. we have a calendar we are populating. anyone who has businesses who have promotions, we can boast it all. >> the idea of having this online came about even when we were negotiating with twitter,

because we knew their building was only going to be several floors. but there are other companies as well. once we really see that happening, we might want to come in. how do we continue getting updating information about whether or not we can come in places that are close by? we know the innovation has a lot to do with companies locating very closely to companies like this who have already registered as anchors in the central market. >> what do you do to find this space? was it complicated? >> we have some excellent brokers, first of all. [laughter] but i think the process was falling in love with the place, falling in love with the building and the area. as always, love is a little complicated. >> did you look at other

buildings and locations before settling on this one? did you shop around? >> we looked at other locations, but it was a quick love affair with this place. >> how long is your lease for? >> three years. >> how much mope with the payroll tax exemption do you think your company is going to save? >> i don't have the details on that. sorry. >> but did you play for it? >> yes. [inaudible question] >> both you and president chiu have spoken about progressing with a more comprehensive payroll tax legislation. can you offer more spess fifty about what that is -- specificity about what that is going to entail? how do you anticipate that working out if you win re-election?

>> well, he is a chiu, and i am a lee, but we are both danish today. [laughter] first of all -- and i know we have had updates with each other because we still meet one-on-one every week as we determined that is in the best interests of moving yites at the board level and the mayor's level together. we have committed to a series of meetings starting in september that -- we are giving ourselves about a year to make sure we include a lot of opinions, establish businesses and new business opinions, to give us time enough to actually come up with some kind of a hybrid approach to preserving the level of revenue that we have already been collecting. but also to create a new revenue stream that would be less job pin issuing than the payroll tax has been. we have heard that very seriously from evolving companies and from established companies, that they want to grow here.

they can't have a satchel system that punishes that growth. so we have internalized that already. that is one of our goals in doing this together. we are just setting up those mention. we will have those meetings include the controller owes office and other experts to plan about our emerging economy. there is a need to update economic planning for the city in the next year. we are going to be updating that at the same time. >> if i could add a couple of things to that, when i was running my company, and as any entrepreneur knows, our business payroll tax has been a huge drag. it has been a reason why we have literally lost tens of thousands of employees in recent years and hundreds of companies. you can talk to venture capitalisting and entrepreneurs who will tell you tax on labor in one out of 10 companies is not the way to incentivize

companies to move to san francisco. i have been calling for a reform of our business tax. it is something that i think finally now several years later many of us agree we need to do. just in the last budget process we actually agreed to put money in the budget to have economists and consultants give us some real data on the best way to move from our current business payroll tax to something that would be a fairer tax of the business community. i think it is very possible it would look like a gross receipts tax which is used by many cities in california. the payroll tax, as you know, we are the only city in the state of california that primarily relies on our -- on that as our form of asking businesses to provide services. i look forward to working with the mayor and my colleagues to determine the best thing to do and hopefully place something on the 2012 ballot to moved

toward a business tax that would ensure growth in our economy. [inaudible question] >> well, last year the city controller actually studied our payroll tax. now we are going to bring in outside economists and consultants to look at this. i do want to mention one thing given the question. while mayor lee and i are competitors on the trail, we are certainly colleagues together at city hall. we are going to work together to move our city forward. >> i can add, too, that part of the conversation with businesses is his also going to be about what the city can do more of that promotes the headquarters of global companies that are locating here in san francisco. at the one end, it is about the tax policies, but it also is, too, as a global city, do we understand that all of the companies, including zendesk, they may want to go global.

do they have that city to be able to go global with them and help them sell their service and products. it is about what president obama has been referring to. for san francisco, it is not so much about selling coffee or peanuts as it is about the knowledge base that we can sell all over the world and have people better connected. that is going to be our big selling point, is we have the global understanding and the connections to help a company like zendesk and twitter become more global in the way they approach their business. >> what are some of the things you can do to promote companies locating headquarters here that you have in mind? >> for example, i do plan, after this election is over, that we ought to have a business trip to the far east that includes, china, japan,

korea and southeast asia. as you know, we are hosting the ministerial meetings next month in preparation for the apac conference meetings that are going to be held in honolulu. the state of california, as the president knows, is a key gateway to a lot of the businesses and countries that want to buy u.s. products. so in follow-up with those meetings that will be held here , and secretary hillary clinton will hold a women and economic summit here in september. that will lead to many more meetings, and the meetings in honolulu. we are continuing to be that gateway. so it would be very natural for a mayor and administration in san francisco to help company representatives find their counterparts in the whole far

east countries, be it japan, southeast asia, thailand, singapore, all the areas including china, japan and korea. those are markets that want this kind of knowledge and products we are producing here and want to be successful in their own right and use that technology to help elevate their companies or create a stronger middle-classes for their country. [inaudible question] >> well, we don't have all the details about who is paying for the trip yet? obviously if i take a trip, i have to pay for it myself. but on behalf of the city and county of san francisco and the board of supervisors, we will have equal representation there. the mayor and the board are working together to promote the city, and we have to do all we can to understand and continue promoting that we are a global international city. and we welcome business both ways. at the same time, as you know,

china s.f., something that we created here through our office of demick development that mayor gavin newsom helped create is getting companies from china to locate here. we have five of their top solar companies located here now. >> i am actually going to wrap this up because we are running out of time with the mayor, and we want him to take his first support call. if you have any follow up questions, direct them at me. find me, and i can give you a card. now let's head over to the desk we created for you. >> all right. let's be a zen.