4 ms·

I didn't say surprising, I said striking. No one has decided to relocate to San Diego, Austin, Dallas, San Antonio, Houston, Phoenix, Atlanta, New Orleans, Miam

by pg_bot 8y ago

I didn't say surprising, I said striking. No one has decided to relocate to San Diego, Austin, Dallas, San Antonio, Houston, Phoenix, Atlanta, New Orleans, Miami, Nashville, or Charlotte? I think it would be silly to equate populations of people that differ wildly in language, customs, and economic opportunity. The world is not evenly distributed. Besides there aren't that many ways to divide the world by 100 Million people, there are 76.

nostrademons 8y ago
"Besides there aren't that many ways to divide the world by 100 Million people, there are 76." There are (7.6B choose 100M) = (7600000000! / (100000000! * 7500000000!)) > well over a googol. Different ways to slice up the world do not have to be disjoint.
- pg_bot 8y ago
  You know what I meant, stop being pedantic.
  - nostrademons 8y ago
    What you meant is nonsensical. If you want to return to the original question of why 76 out of the top 100 YC startups are in the Bay Area and zero of them are in the South, east of LA - it's because the only populations that matter for a tech startup are founders, early adopters, angel investors, venture capitalists, executives who have scaled a company by 100,000x, corporate lawyers, digital marketers, engineers, DevOps/SRE, UX researchers, UI designers, product managers, and (for a B2B startup) enterprise sales reps. All of these populations are abundant in the Bay Area. Many of them are missing entirely in the South, or if they're present, they're rare enough that there isn't a liquid market for them. If you're a founder, you can go wherever you want, but you're only one of the limiting regents for a startup. Without the other, less glamorous ones, your startup is not going to take off.
    - pg_bot 8y ago
      I think the advantages of the Bay area are overhyped. If you take a look at the of number of people that are employed by these companies, few of them employ more than 500 people. A lot of them employ less than 100 people. I think you can find 100 qualified people to do all of the tasks you need in any US city that has over a million people. VCs and angel investors have to beg great companies to take their money. However, it's best to not need outside investment at all. It's easier to keep the burn rate low if you're in a cheaper city. https://www.ycombinator.com/topcompanies/ https://www.ycombinator.com/topcompanies/
      - nostrademons 8y ago
        It's certainly possible, and I see from your profile that you've put your money where your mouth is. It's interesting that this holds true out of the 100 most valuable YC companies, though. YC has funded close to 3000 companies, which is pretty close to a representative sample, and those companies originate from all over the world. If the Bay Area didn't have a real advantage in growing & scaling companies and it was all hype, I would expect the market to wash it out of this sample.
dragonwriter 8y ago
> No one has decided to relocate to San Diego, Austin, Dallas, San Antonio, Houston, Phoenix, Atlanta, New Orleans, Miami, Nashville, or Charlotte? There's only 12 in the US outside of the Bay and NYC, the first of which is where YC companies are at some point compelled to be, the latter of which clearly has a sui generis draw. (Presumably, those outside the US are driven by differences in language, culture, etc., that you point, correctly, to and thus shouldn't be expected to be some random place in the US.) I don't think it's really all that striking that of those 12 companies, there aren't any in the region pointed to. > Besides there aren't that many ways to divide the world by 100 Million people, there are 76. There's a lot more than 76 ways; any particular division into 100 million population units will have 76 non-overlapping regions, but there is a very large number of ways to draw those regions (even if you restrain it from the simple combinatorial problem and require contiguity), and thus a very large number of potential regions.

by pg_bot 8y ago

nostrademons 8y ago

"Besides there aren't that many ways to divide the world by 100 Million people, there are 76." There are (7.6B choose 100M) = (7600000000! / (100000000! * 7500000000!)) > well over a googol. Different ways to slice up the world do not have to be disjoint.

pg_bot 8y ago
You know what I meant, stop being pedantic.
- nostrademons 8y ago
  What you meant is nonsensical. If you want to return to the original question of why 76 out of the top 100 YC startups are in the Bay Area and zero of them are in the South, east of LA - it's because the only populations that matter for a tech startup are founders, early adopters, angel investors, venture capitalists, executives who have scaled a company by 100,000x, corporate lawyers, digital marketers, engineers, DevOps/SRE, UX researchers, UI designers, product managers, and (for a B2B startup) enterprise sales reps. All of these populations are abundant in the Bay Area. Many of them are missing entirely in the South, or if they're present, they're rare enough that there isn't a liquid market for them. If you're a founder, you can go wherever you want, but you're only one of the limiting regents for a startup. Without the other, less glamorous ones, your startup is not going to take off.
  - pg_bot 8y ago
    I think the advantages of the Bay area are overhyped. If you take a look at the of number of people that are employed by these companies, few of them employ more than 500 people. A lot of them employ less than 100 people. I think you can find 100 qualified people to do all of the tasks you need in any US city that has over a million people. VCs and angel investors have to beg great companies to take their money. However, it's best to not need outside investment at all. It's easier to keep the burn rate low if you're in a cheaper city. https://www.ycombinator.com/topcompanies/ https://www.ycombinator.com/topcompanies/
    - nostrademons 8y ago
      It's certainly possible, and I see from your profile that you've put your money where your mouth is. It's interesting that this holds true out of the 100 most valuable YC companies, though. YC has funded close to 3000 companies, which is pretty close to a representative sample, and those companies originate from all over the world. If the Bay Area didn't have a real advantage in growing & scaling companies and it was all hype, I would expect the market to wash it out of this sample.

dragonwriter 8y ago

> No one has decided to relocate to San Diego, Austin, Dallas, San Antonio, Houston, Phoenix, Atlanta, New Orleans, Miami, Nashville, or Charlotte? There's only 12 in the US outside of the Bay and NYC, the first of which is where YC companies are at some point compelled to be, the latter of which clearly has a sui generis draw. (Presumably, those outside the US are driven by differences in language, culture, etc., that you point, correctly, to and thus shouldn't be expected to be some random place in the US.) I don't think it's really all that striking that of those 12 companies, there aren't any in the region pointed to. > Besides there aren't that many ways to divide the world by 100 Million people, there are 76. There's a lot more than 76 ways; any particular division into 100 million population units will have 76 non-overlapping regions, but there is a very large number of ways to draw those regions (even if you restrain it from the simple combinatorial problem and require contiguity), and thus a very large number of potential regions.