It was almost as if PG and Jessica set out to prove the Boston/NYC status quo of VC wrong. If you wanted funding around here pre-2005, you had to be an experienced exec w/ a strong team of MBA's and senior engineers. Once YC + FB left and saw huge success, there was a scramble to figure out what went wrong.

Check out this meetup that a local VC set up back in 2005 [1]. Justin Kan, Emmett Shear, and Reddit's co-founders (Along with many other notables!) attended. All of them left for the West Coast.

[1]http://worcester.typepad.com/pc4media/2005/11/boston_web_inn...