[beering]

> Why? The San Francisco requirement was against my ideals that tech exists everywhere, and that's not how I wanted to build a company.

So you have to be in the Bay Area for 3 months. After that you are welcome to be anywhere. If being in the Bay for the 3 months is not feasible, then just say so, or find something near you instead.

> More so, the stake they required relative to funding was pretty huge.

This is entirely dependent on what you currently have and what you hope to get out of YC. If you're just starting out, that 10% stake is worth approximately $0, so it's a good deal. If you're doing $5mm in EBITDA a year, then it's not. But to say that it's "pretty huge" without any context is shortsighted.