Yes, I believe this conspiracy theory too. All of the vcs are double dipping, they own a ton of real estate in sf and invest in sf based companies because they know they get the money back through rent
But it's a conspiracy theory that doesn't even require a explicit coordination, just people acting in their own self interest.
Also they understand that most of these companies are 100% losses anyway, but real estate investments are much less likely to go to zero. (Plus rent is just cold hard cash.)
Why would you accept my data without checking the methods?
The onus is on you to prove a very reasonable human behavior false.
Whole lot of people saying we ought not fiddle kids been arrested for diddling kids.
Reasonable real world, if emotionally “wrong” feeling does not make the notion wrong.
You want data the sun rose in the east, go outside.
So many demand technical correctness in others, think without checking themselves, they know what’s true.
I never said that's the only reason it exists, but you know what, that might be the only reason it's so hyper localized to one place.
Let's look at the incentives:
Pretend you are a wealthy VC with tens of millions invested in San Francisco real estate.
You have been given billions by LPs to manage.
If I, as the person that has control over how this money can be distributed, only invest those billions in the bay area and bring all these high skilled workers to this one place I can actually impact the price of real estate and triple the tens of millions I already have invested. Once those high skill workers move here they will remain, even after the initial startup goes under because they will move to a different startup.
Now if all the VCs are doing this and they all control large multi billion dollar funds...