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There is no guarantee that Silicon Valley will be the center of tech innovation in America forever. There are a couple of economic trends that put California at

by pg_bot 9y ago

There is no guarantee that Silicon Valley will be the center of tech innovation in America forever. There are a couple of economic trends that put California at a disadvantage in the near future. 1.) You can build a great product with fewer Engineers than ever before. A single highly skilled engineer can run a company that reaches millions of customers. 2.) California's Prop 13[0] hinders new entrants to California by so much that it becomes uneconomical for new talent to locate there. 3.) You need less capital to run an online business than 5-10 years ago. If you know how to manage your own servers it is pretty cheap to run a website. (even with high availability constraints) 4.) Open source software and online education have improved greatly in the last 5 years. Anyone can truly learn anything given time and motivation. I think it is highly likely that newer successful technology companies become more evenly distributed across the country due to these factors. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_(1978) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_(197...

deleted 9y ago
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hkmurakami 9y ago
Devils advocate time :) 1) This leads to increased competition like the one we have seen with multiple companies competing in the same growing market. The one(s) with venture backing can often muscle out companies with a more compelling product, which will maintain the importance of being proximal to capital (i.e. SV). An example of this is Balanced Payments vs Stripe, imo. 2) My parents moved to SV in the 70's and were shocked at how expensive apartments were and how high the cost of living was (they moved from the Northeast). I had a converstation with my dad about prohibitive housing costs here in 2005. It's not readily apparent to me if things really will ever come to a true breaking point. (also population dynamics wise, many baby boomers are going to perish within the next 20 years) 3) Related to #1, when many teams can build competing products for cheap, what will separate them will frequently be their sales and marketing muscle. This in turn is often backed by capital in a short-term-unsustainable manner than drives out competition. 4) Building is often the easy part, other than the small number of truly exceptional viral consumer products. Having written all this, I don't really disagree with any of your points, though I think that you exhibit egalitarian idealism often found in hacker types :)

by pg_bot 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

hkmurakami 9y ago

Devils advocate time :) 1) This leads to increased competition like the one we have seen with multiple companies competing in the same growing market. The one(s) with venture backing can often muscle out companies with a more compelling product, which will maintain the importance of being proximal to capital (i.e. SV). An example of this is Balanced Payments vs Stripe, imo. 2) My parents moved to SV in the 70's and were shocked at how expensive apartments were and how high the cost of living was (they moved from the Northeast). I had a converstation with my dad about prohibitive housing costs here in 2005. It's not readily apparent to me if things really will ever come to a true breaking point. (also population dynamics wise, many baby boomers are going to perish within the next 20 years) 3) Related to #1, when many teams can build competing products for cheap, what will separate them will frequently be their sales and marketing muscle. This in turn is often backed by capital in a short-term-unsustainable manner than drives out competition. 4) Building is often the easy part, other than the small number of truly exceptional viral consumer products. Having written all this, I don't really disagree with any of your points, though I think that you exhibit egalitarian idealism often found in hacker types :)