It’s the Dalton, GA effect — why do carpet companies set up their manufacturing in Dalton? Because that’s where people make carpets. To put it another way, current industrial capabilities contain historical path dependencies that are hard to replicate artificially. In the case of SV (+ Bay Area), the nexus of speculative capital, incumbent tech firms, a startup ecosystem, and top-tier technologists is basically impossible to develop artificially. While the geography of the area may expand — I’m no local, so it’s beyond me why East Bay hasn’t seen significant expansion — it’s hard to imagine SV being displaced as the center of American tech prowess.
It's a lot easier if your company is fully distributed and remote. Then you can hire anyone, from any location in the world.
It's certainly not for everyone, but more and more successful tech startups seem to be moving to that model, and many new ones are using it from the very beginning.
This requires a lot of discipline and experience managing remote teams. It’s significantly harder in a lot of ways. That doesn’t make it not worthwhile, but I’d argue you’re simply trading one set of problems for another. Whether those new problems are worth more or less is entirely dependent on your individual calculus.
