This.

Lived and worked in Austin tech 7 years. This article is all about startup funding, plus it quotes one unicorn whose home base / frame of reference was Houston, not another tech hub.

Austin was always a great place to build a tech career if you, for example, had a family. The talent pool is great but, in my experience, has a lower risk tolerance (read: prefers bigger and more established companies) than SF. So if you're evaluating by startup formation or funding, sure, the Bay was and remains in the lead. And as that stuff dries up, it's going to dry up faster in Austin, because the culture in Austin always had a slant toward optimization over disruption.

For the big SF/Seattle-based companies, Austin seems like a cheap second city. For a Houston-based startup, Austin seems like an expensive second location. And for a new startup trying to take risks and go big, the Bay is just set up better for it.

I don't see this as losing a luster. I see it as... very little change at all.

My question too. Having lived in Seattle it seems like every time tech boomed there were stories about it becoming the next SV and every time there was a general tech recession there were stories about how it had failed to become the next SV. This article seems very anecdotal and some of the anecdotes contradict each other: Austin has become too crowded and expensive, so companies are moving back to California; Austin doesn’t have a big enough “scene”, so one company is moving to Tulsa?

Yes? Isn’t that implied by “losing its luster,” considering the publisher and audience of the article? I think it goes on to talk about the relationship to venture capital and local govt. so it’s more than a general thing?