The most striking thing about this map to me was that you could draw a straight line from the bottom of Virginia all the way across the United States and you wouldn't find a single top company until you hit Los Angeles. There are about 100 million people that live in that area so it's surprising that there isn't at least 1 company headquartered there.
> The most striking thing about this map to me was that you could draw a straight line from the bottom of Virginia all the way across the United States and you wouldn't find a single top company until you hit Los Angeles.
Why is it surprising? YC has historically required relocating to the Bay, so it's not really surprising that the vast majority of top 101 YC companies are in the Bay, or that of the 27 that aren't, there are many paths on the Earth's surface that include 100 million people and none of those relocated top YC companies; and that is even before considering the (also unsurprising) concentration of non-Bay top YC companies in NYC, which leaves even fewer for the rest of the planet.
I didn't say surprising, I said striking. No one has decided to relocate to San Diego, Austin, Dallas, San Antonio, Houston, Phoenix, Atlanta, New Orleans, Miami, Nashville, or Charlotte? I think it would be silly to equate populations of people that differ wildly in language, customs, and economic opportunity. The world is not evenly distributed. Besides there aren't that many ways to divide the world by 100 Million people, there are 76.
> No one has decided to relocate to San Diego, Austin, Dallas, San Antonio, Houston, Phoenix, Atlanta, New Orleans, Miami, Nashville, or Charlotte?
There's only 12 in the US outside of the Bay and NYC, the first of which is where YC companies are at some point compelled to be, the latter of which clearly has a sui generis draw. (Presumably, those outside the US are driven by differences in language, culture, etc., that you point, correctly, to and thus shouldn't be expected to be some random place in the US.)
I don't think it's really all that striking that of those 12 companies, there aren't any in the region pointed to.
> Besides there aren't that many ways to divide the world by 100 Million people, there are 76.
There's a lot more than 76 ways; any particular division into 100 million population units will have 76 non-overlapping regions, but there is a very large number of ways to draw those regions (even if you restrain it from the simple combinatorial problem and require contiguity), and thus a very large number of potential regions.
"Besides there aren't that many ways to divide the world by 100 Million people, there are 76."
There are (7.6B choose 100M) = (7600000000! / (100000000! * 7500000000!)) > well over a googol. Different ways to slice up the world do not have to be disjoint.
If you want to return to the original question of why 76 out of the top 100 YC startups are in the Bay Area and zero of them are in the South, east of LA - it's because the only populations that matter for a tech startup are founders, early adopters, angel investors, venture capitalists, executives who have scaled a company by 100,000x, corporate lawyers, digital marketers, engineers, DevOps/SRE, UX researchers, UI designers, product managers, and (for a B2B startup) enterprise sales reps. All of these populations are abundant in the Bay Area. Many of them are missing entirely in the South, or if they're present, they're rare enough that there isn't a liquid market for them. If you're a founder, you can go wherever you want, but you're only one of the limiting regents for a startup. Without the other, less glamorous ones, your startup is not going to take off.
I think the advantages of the Bay area are overhyped. If you take a look at the of number of people that are employed by these companies, few of them employ more than 500 people. A lot of them employ less than 100 people. I think you can find 100 qualified people to do all of the tasks you need in any US city that has over a million people. VCs and angel investors have to beg great companies to take their money. However, it's best to not need outside investment at all. It's easier to keep the burn rate low if you're in a cheaper city.
It's certainly possible, and I see from your profile that you've put your money where your mouth is. It's interesting that this holds true out of the 100 most valuable YC companies, though. YC has funded close to 3000 companies, which is pretty close to a representative sample, and those companies originate from all over the world. If the Bay Area didn't have a real advantage in growing & scaling companies and it was all hype, I would expect the market to wash it out of this sample.
