The most important thing nowadays is not to have debt, interrupting and time consuming VCs and great cash-flow from day 1. Silicon Valley is really good only for VCs this is why they try to sell you this image that you must be at their playground, play by their rules and sell to them in order to succeed. This is all old news. This is not how you succeed today. Today, you won't be able to compete with startups without debt, who don't waste time on rounds of sales and other irrelevant activities, but just focus on their business without interruptions originating from 3rd parties. To work in debt free, independent environment where you can actually focus on your product it is much better to be outside of Silicon Valley than to be part of it.