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Comment by sytelus | Hacker News Reader

I have no idea why people still insist on building their startups in SV. As a startup founder, you want to be penny pincher and have maximum runway. Even keeping aside high commercial rents, the people available for hiring need huge salaries + options because they need to pay their bills as well. Why not just go to SV for fund raising and go back as fast as possible?

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It’s my understanding founders sometimes want to go back home while the VCs insist on SV. From the VC side, I wonder if the high burn is almost a plus: they need the founders to need a lot of money so the VCs can scoop up a higher percentage, and they need the founders to feel the monthly burn so they build something fast.

From the VC side, it's because they don't want to help build your business, they either want you to be a unicorn (where you absolutely need the top talent that can only be found in SV for exorbitant salaries) or go bankrupt. If you want to build a business with less than a billion dollars of revenue, best to avoid the VCs altogether, they'll just fuck you.

If the geography is important, there are still more affordable locales in the Bay Area without being in SF or SV. Dublin/Pleasanton/Livermore/Tracy, Richmond/Pinole/El Sobrante, even Newark/Hayward/San Leandro are all traveling distance to VCs, and it's actually possible to buy a house for some of the employees who wish to do so.

I wonder the same thing as you though, there are so many great cities in this vast country, and we are a highly connected society thanks to technology. Why is physical geography still important? You could set up in another city, and even after plane tickets to Palo Alto to meet with VCs, would still come out ahead.

Tracy is a two hour drive in traffic... Seattle and Portland are closer by travel time.

Yes, my point was that the proximity to VCs should not be relevant, and if it’s that important to be in the Bay Area, for the number of times you would actually need to meet with VCs, you could set up in places like Tracy. I’m sure many workers would like to live in more affordable and less dense areas.

The other point is exactly what you said. Set up anywhere in the country and fly in to meet VCs. You’d still come out ahead.

"I have no idea why people still insist on building their startups in SV. As a startup founder, you want to be penny pincher and have maximum runway." People build their startups in SV because they disagree with your latter sentence.

If you want to penny pinch and build a long runway, yes, SV is horrible. SV is where you want to go if you want to spend exhorbitant amounts of money to hire top talent (i.e. outbid Google and Facebook) in expectation of making even more money.

In addition to what others have said, it can kill the business to move it elsewhere. If all your connections are in the Bay Area, leaving it can amount to cutting your own throat.

Business owners often don't really know why it is working. So once you get something that works, it is quite dangerous to change the formula in any way. You may be killing it and you may have no idea how to remedy it if it goes bad.

Some like to "play" startup as long as they can.

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