I dunno-- the Seattle startup scene has seen pretty insane growth over the last 5 years... It was purportedly nearly non-existant 5-7 years ago. Harj and I th

I dunno-- the Seattle startup scene has seen pretty insane growth over the last 5 years... It was purportedly nearly non-existant 5-7 years ago. Harj and I threw together a YC Seattle meetup that was over 100 people in about a week. You could attend a startup related event in Seattle almost every day of the week. I did some really weak science and found: "In 2007, 45 of 110 (41%) acquired companies were in the Valley. In 2008, only 18 of 115 (16%) were." (whole post with sources: http://bit.ly/bDpam http://bit.ly/bDpam) I also (with some help) crunched all Crunchbase data here: http://bit.ly/Mapl1 http://bit.ly/Mapl1 The globalization make sense to me. 5 years ago, you couldn't even roll the dice without a million bucks. Now plenty of startups spin up with pennies. And while the Valley has a few advantages, the really CLEAR advantage that it has (which has diminishing value for the earliest stages) has always been the huge number of investors. Still, though-- starting up might be getting easier, but when you need funding relocation might still be right thing to do.