>I'll offer the counter position to "move to a startup hub" namely "move to a place where you expect the highest density of your customers" (which should help w

>I'll offer the counter position to "move to a startup hub" namely "move to a place where you expect the highest density of your customers" (which should help with chance meetings as well) Based on empirical history of how successful startups have turned into $1 billion companies, it looks like the density & quantity of the hiring pool and investors are higher priorities than location of customers. In SV, you get a pipeline of fresh Stanford grads and also the ex-employees from Apple/Google/Facebook/etc. For investors, you have a bunch of them clustered on Sand Hill Rd. For B2C consumer facing internet businesses, there are no geographically concentrated customers to move to. The prioritization of proximity close to the customers may make more sense for a lifestyle business[1]. E.g. you're developing a SaaS cloud service for surfing shops to manage their inventory of surfboard gear. In that case, it might make more sense to locate the headquarters in San Diego and it's a calculated tradeoff to rely on the smaller pool of programmers in that area. The startup CEO physically visits each surfing shop to see how the software is used and gets real feedback for new features. Investors would also be less of an issue because a lot of lifestyle businesses are bootstrapped to profitability. That said, YC and VCs don't invest in lifestyle businesses so their bias towards SV wouldn't apply. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifestyle_business https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifestyle_business