There are so many variables to tease apart, though. Are more companies raising money out west just because there are more good companies out there? And the fa

There are so many variables to tease apart, though. Are more companies raising money out west just because there are more good companies out there? And the fact that companies are more likely to get funded in the Bay Area doesn't necessarily mean they are better companies. It might just be that angels and VCs are looser with money out there. One really useful metric in all of this would be comparing the Bay Area's percentage of VC-backed startups that actually succeed to that of Boston and New York. That would help cut right to the long-term relevance to success that funding has in the first place. (The idea being that bad companies are unlikely to succeed even if they do get funding and that good companies are likely to get funding even if they're outside the Bay Area).