> While it is true that there are many people all around the world with the skills necessary for working at a startup, many of them congregate in SF.
It seems odd that this doesn't appear to scale with population size. One would expect many multiples of people with these skills in cities with higher populations.
They are in the other cities, but it's a network effect. The most interesting jobs are in SF, so they move to SF, so when people make new interesting jobs they do it in SF because all the people are in SF.
As I said, I hope this trend reverses as more people accept remote work as a good way to do business. But until then, it is what it is.
I suppose that all depends on what kinds of jobs you consider to be interesting.
At the very least, those who believe the most interesting jobs are in SF congregate there. And people who create jobs matching that belief do it there.
Tech expertise depends on a bandwagon effect to create sustainable pools of labour. It's very difficult for isolated individuals to kick-start a tech scene from scratch, even in a very large city, so it happens rarely.
It seems odd that this doesn't appear to scale with population size. One would expect many multiples of people with these skills in cities with higher populations.