Our company (Ambition, YC'w14) has thrived with this logic. Its really part of our culture & our philosophy for being a "cockroach" startup (aka stay alive long

Our company (Ambition, YC'w14) has thrived with this logic. Its really part of our culture & our philosophy for being a "cockroach" startup (aka stay alive long enough to build a great business). Our HQ is in Chattanooga, TN. Many of our engineers interned or worked with Oak Ridge Nat'l lab while at university. The majority of our employees are not from Chattanooga, but ended up choosing the southeast or midwest over SV - we constantly hear from amazing engineers/ designers/ sales people in Nashville or Atlanta (both ~ 90 miles away), as well as Memphis, Knoxville, Birmingham, research triangle (NC), and of course SV, NYC, Chicago, etc. In our opinion, great people live all over the place for a multitude of great reasons. In our case, Chattanooga had A. excellent quality of life & B. reasonable cost of living. We still spend a lot of time in the Bay Area and have built an incredible network, but not every 10x engineer wants to live in SoMa.