Not at all. They all mentioned effectively "better opportunities". There's a high chance that a copycat product in a developing market will give much better ret

Not at all. They all mentioned effectively "better opportunities". There's a high chance that a copycat product in a developing market will give much better returns than a copycat in SV, and since the business model might have been fairly validated, they don't have questions on that front either. Capital doesn't explain setting up multiple offices in the same countries/regions and hiring more investment partners to scour for opportunities. The payoffs in non-SV are precisely higher because of worse access to target markets and talent, and different regulatory regimes. That creates a large barrier for entry, where only tried and tested localized business models can succeed. For instance, Uber is still throwing all they have into India and yet losing more than Ola, Uber had to give away a lot of ground to local players in South East Asia and Europe such as Grab or Meituan, a lot of unicorns are being made possible because of legal gray areas, and different regulations effectively trounce foreign business models while boosting local ones. I think you're making a key mistake of conflating non-SV as within US. A lot of Sand Hill road funding goes abroad, often a lot to India and China. And apart from say a 3-month sojourn at YC, there really isn't much value for even a SaaS startup to continue on in SF. On the contrary, I know a few founders personally who didn't find any fit with YC's proposition, and still got funded by the likes of Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins without even stepping foot in the Bay area.