[JumpCrisscross]

> that has nothing to do with the Bay Area and everything to do with accidents of history

I think you’re wrong. But that’s irrelevant. The fact that it exists now is what gives it staying power. One of the surest bets I’ve seen in seed and Series A investing is when a market has one or two competitors in a cluster and the rest outside. The insiders win. Always. It’s the easiest bulldozing strategy that exists.

[csomar]

> I think you’re wrong. But that’s irrelevant.

It's on you to prove the parent wrong and you provided nothing to explain why the Bay Area is special beyond history/staying power.

[JumpCrisscross]

> It's on you to prove the parent wrong and you provided nothing to explain why the Bay Area is special beyond history/staying power

I’m literally saying it’s irrelevant due to incumbency effects. If someone is doing something AI outside the Bay Area, a decent business is to copy and outraise them.

[close04]

> I think you’re wrong. But that’s irrelevant. The fact that it exists now is what gives it staying power.

You said OP was wrong to say "that has nothing to do with the Bay Area and everything to do with accidents of history" but that it's irrelevant anyway because the area has incumbency effects. Those are 2 separate things, something that you claim to be wrong but irrelevant, and something you say is true.

I agree with the second point, incumbency is a heavy weight to dislodge. But why would OP be wrong to say there's nothing intrinsic to the place that give it power?

I think OP is completely correct, the Bay Area as a place itself isn't special, it's those historical accidental decisions that now make it a hard to dislodge incumbent. But this detail is very important because if "the place" doesn't have some intrinsic power, like some unique natural resource, geography, climate, etc. that just can't be replicated elsewhere, then it can be replicated elsewhere.

In fewer words, "the place" having something unique means immovability. Incumbency just means inertia. Inertia isn't what it use to be. Detroit was the place for building cars just a few decades ago. One accidental decision, one bad policy can send an incumbent on a slow roll down. The Bay Area itself has nothing that reasonably can't be replicated elsewhere, unlike for example an oil field which you have or you don't.

[fragmede]

Municipalities trying to make their own Silicon... Alley, Beach, Hills, Slopes, Forest, Prairie, Bayou, Desert, Roundabout, Docks, Glen, Fen, Cape, Oasis, (and more!) with varying degrees of success, so I don't know that it is unreasonably replicatible. Despite all those efforts, OpenAI and Anthropic both are heavy hitters in the AI industry, and they are both headquartered in San Francisco.

Naturally, nothing lasts forever. Not Silicon Valley, not the USA, not the Holy Roman Empire. Some things do last quite a while though. If we look all the way back to Hewett-Packard, though now a shadow of its former self, it was established in 1939.

[Jackpillar]

Exactly. No one is arguing the historical & material reasons as to why Bay Area is the birthing place of many technological revolutions. The Bay Area is special because of said history/staying power - which has systemic downstream advantages that cannot be replicated. 60% of total VC funding is in the Bay Area alone. Being surrounded by Stanford, Berkeley, etc gives the region a constant flow of world class engineers. Theres just no other region like it and won't be for a very long time.

[wubrr]

> No one is arguing the historical & material reasons as to why Bay Area is the birthing place of many technological revolutions.

You're kinda missing the bigger picture - the fact that Bay Area was not always a tech hub, and became one at some point for various reason - which can happen in any other place (and has).

> which has systemic downstream advantages that cannot be replicated.

Seems like a very baseless and meaningless statement.

> Being surrounded by Stanford, Berkeley, etc gives the region a constant flow of world class engineers.

Except for the fact that the vast majority pf Bay Area tech talent does not come from Stanford or Berkeley, and is being outsourced at ever increasing rates.

> Theres just no other region like it and won't be for a very long time.

If you say so.

[Jackpillar]

Yeah except for it has always been a tech hub because the term "tech hub" didn't exist before the Bay Area? I mean the first message sent over the precursor to the internet was from UCLA to the Stanford Research Institute in 1969, and the SF Bay Area having some of the first infrastructure for high-speed internet was a key factor into its position as the tech hub. Mind you this is all preceded by Hewlett Packard 30 years earlier setting the stage for the semiconductor revolution, and even this is preceded by 100 years with Leland Stanford. To much to talk about here as to why there is a unique mix of private capital, industry/government collusion, university research and development, and more that are entrenched in the region.

The makeup of tech companies employees doesn't remotely tell the full story of the advantages of the UC system, Stanford, and other universities in CA through research that feed into SV as the leading tech hub that cannot be replicated (See example of the invention of the internet above). I mean hell, 4 UC alum won nobel prizes this year alone, one of which was the chief scientist at Google's quantum AI.

But yeah sure, if we're talking in the context of "anything is possible" then yeah I concede, it can happen anywhere. Kind of a boring insight. The point is that no - it hasn't happened anywhere else to the extent of the bay area despite cities trying to for the past 30 years- and it won't happen for a very long time because of the converging mechanisms that took place over the past 100 years.

[wubrr]

Places where technological innovation and development happen have existed long before the internet and semiconductors. The industrial revolution didn't originate or center around the Bay Area.

> The makeup of tech companies employees doesn't remotely tell the full story...

What? You made the argument that Bay Area has some kind of special access to tech talent because of Stanford - I simply pointed out that the vast majority of Bay Area tech employees are not from Stanford (not to mention many Stanford alums leave California).

> UC system, Stanford, and other universities in CA through research that feed into SV as the leading tech hub that cannot be replicated

Really? MIT, Harvard, Yale, Georgia Tech, Waterloo don't exist?

> I mean hell, 4 UC alum won nobel prizes this year alone, one of which was the chief scientist at Google's quantum AI.

And several google/deepmind employees from/educated in UK won a nobel prize in 2024... what's your point?

> Kind of a boring insight.

Nah, the same old 'bay area cause bay area' insight is what's boring.

It was more true (but still very boring) 10 years ago, not anymore.