I'm leaving after 3 years working for SV start ups. It's time for me to do my own thing, and there's just no viable way for me to stay here during the "figuring it out phase". Spain, France and the Netherlands have attractive entrepreneur visas, or I could easily go home to Australia, to New Zealand or Canada. I will miss living near Stanford and the people around here, but there are other top universities to go camp out next to.

There was similar discussion on proberts AMA, there's simply no easy way to hang out here to work on cool side projects. The closest thing is the E2 visa, which would require all of my savings.