I agree, I've lived in DC my whole life and always told myself the startup scene was great there. Then I moved to NYC, and now Palo Alto. The startup scene in DC is horrible compared to similar sized cities (by contrast Portland has Nike, Intel, New Relic, Puppet Labs, etc.), and DC is dominated by the federal government. Why work at a startup in DC when you can make $150k+ as a gov't contractor in DC.