Regarding your first point, I think it's both honestly. I've lived in various major Western cities in NA/EU/AU and SV was cut by a different cloth. I've never

Regarding your first point, I think it's both honestly. I've lived in various major Western cities in NA/EU/AU and SV was cut by a different cloth. I've never met such a confluence of interesting contrarians in my entire life. I don't write that to proselytize SV or to mask criticisms of the region, I genuinely feel my experience living there was substantially different with respect to the exposure of eye-opening ideas than any other place I've lived in. Airbnb isn't even like a crazy idea of a company, but the gist of the company was incredibly oft-putting to the majority of people I told back home in 2009. "What? Short-term rental to a stranger in my place?! No way!" Now of course, Airbnb as a concept is as 'normal' as any other large corporation. It doesn't matter that my hometown produces great engineers or has billions of dollars in funds, when the overall community is highly risk-averse and conformist, it affects the market size, investment, etc.