I agree that this is the status quo re: startups, but the high water mark was probably a couple of years ago, with the caveats that there have long been &#x27;SV&#x27; startups that have or keep all or most of their engineering in an offshore location, say in Israel, with only the corporate office and upper management &#x2F; sales moving to SV after VC investment.<p>However, now we&#x27;re seeing two things happen:<p>* Several cities technically in &#x27;flyover country&#x27; (eg. Boulder CO, Austin TX, etc.) have already built brands&#x2F;ecosystems as startup hubs, and more cities are trying to copy their example rather than &#x27;become the next SV&#x27;.<p>* Some fully geographically distributed companies (eg. Automattic, Buffer) are gaining visibility as success stories, and although they are still the exception, I expect more new startups to try and copy them, if only because Bay Area COL is now so ridiculously high.