You go to the homeless shelter. You stop by the community colleges job office and construction sites looking for day labor jobs so that you can buy food. You go to the park all day and hang around the water fountain where you at least have water. Later you panhandle at the freeway exit ramp. After a few days you get chased out of a coffee shop due to your appearance and smell.

1. I would have highly recommended you work on whatever project on the side BEFORE moving to Silicon Valley. Get feedback, build a prototype, launch, fix bugs, etc, and go somewhere with it.

2. THEN I would have recommended moving at that point, finding other startup folks looking for roommates, and join in. Gives you like minded folks who hopefully will turn out to be good roommates.

3. Finally, I'd continue working on said project and start hitting up meetups/events to spread the word while getting feedback and making new friends along the way.

Given that isn't what you're asking and say you are in SV without a project or anything going on, first order is still to find a place to live and an income source. Then proceed to work on said idea (as mentioned above) and go mingle to get some friends.

Assuming OP can program, finding a job in one of the code mines isn't going to be hard. What is going to be hard is:

1. Finding a place to live (The SF market is god awful. Living in the southbay without a car will limit any "networking" opportunities.)

2. Living within your means. We are not in Kansas anymore, that 6 figure salary in the code mines will vanish quickly when you add up rent, living expenses and entertainment (Oh, also if you come from a state with no state-tax, we have those around here too, fun!)

3. Manage to find time to hack on this project that is going "to change the world". At first, you will definitely want to go to every meetup in town and every beering event that startups provide, you will end up not having time to actually build a product. So dedicate sometime to do that too. :-)

You take that couple of days work of motel rooms and buy a plane ticket back to Iowa and you go back and stop being foolish and have something worthwhile before you move to the Valley. The Valley doesn't make or break you, what you bring with does.