While some of the article just seems like nostalgic yearning, I agree that it's not necessarily the best place to start a company. My wife and I were making a very good income at Google but still found ourselves wondering how we would ever afford to a buy house, raise a family and other medium to long-term goals. The idea of starting a company while having to pay $3000+ in rent was laughable.<p>We lived in the Bay Area for the last 5 years and wound up moving to Charlotte, NC in order to bootstrap my business. While the tech/startup community here is obviously much smaller, it's thriving. I've been completely surprised by the level of diverse technical talent here and now that I'm outside of the Silicon Valley bubble I see that Charlotte's not alone. There are thriving startup communities all over the country and at the end of the day, it's easy enough to hop on a plane to SF to visit investors. I'd rather focus on building my business than constantly worry about how I'm going to afford housing.
The internet was supposed to facilitate telecommuting etc, yet some of the people most in the know - the yc partners - require startups to <i>physically</i> relocate to Silicon Valley.
A bit off topic, but it's a bit sad/melancholy to be reminded that Sun - who actually made real physical _stuff_ like all those Sparcs and Alphas - ended up selling for barely more than what Groupon apparently recently turned down...
"The biggest issues with the Valley are local, state and federal governmental overreach and overregulation. It's over-pensioned, over-unionized and over the top."<p>-- Scott McNealy