I'm not familiar with the NYC or Boston startup scene, but I think that arguing that any city is going to overtake SV anytime soon is naive (as the OP found out

I'm not familiar with the NYC or Boston startup scene, but I think that arguing that any city is going to overtake SV anytime soon is naive (as the OP found out himself). SV or, more correctly the greater Bay Area, is to tech entrepreneurship as LA is to movies. Sure, you can become a star in NYC or somewhere else but everybody just knows that if you want to increase your chances, you've gotta go to LA. As Shawn Mullins says in Lullaby for LA: it's hard to play a gig in this town and keep a straight face seems like everyone here's got a plan it's kind of like Nashville with a tan Well, SV is "kind of like LA with a pwn" (I'm trying to rhyme, too). Just as any waiter or waitress and everybody's neighbor in LA wants to make it big in the movies, so it is in SV. The buzz of ambition in the air can be unsettling to many people. Interestingly, the movie industry started in NYC, then moved to LA in the 1910s and 20s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_the_United_States#Origins http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_the_United_States#Ori...). Read that part of the Wikipedia article carefully, as many of the reasons for SV's dominance are pretty much the same.