Very nice post. After attending startup school I found myself wanting to move for the first time since living in Austin. Then I thought about how much cheaper I could live in Austin while working on the startup. Of your reasons _to_ move to the Bay Area, I am most attracted to 2 and 6. I think there is probably a right time to make the move though.
Well, you can always fly to conferences and network there.
As for 6 - Thinking back to something Paul Graham said about how the number 6 startup hub should really not even be considered to be in the same league as the number 1 or 2, I wonder if there might be a non-geographic effect to be gained by all the startups who are NOT in the Valley joining virtual forces to be a counterweight to the SF-club.
I think there are likely alot of us, and the bar for our success is certainly lower than it is if you live in the SF-area.
Weird that there aren't any pure Startup conferences, at least that I know of. They all seem to be organized by the funders or by people who are out to make a buck on the conference itself. A conference organized by startups with their interests in mind i.e. no $1500 presentation fees, would potentially still attract investors/press/etc. without having to have the impreteur of some internet celebrity organizing it. Its almost like the word 'startup' itself has enough celebrity around it now to pull its own weight.
We should have it in some decidely non-startup hub, like Hartford CT or something...
I've been to a few Technology Meetups like these where 3-5 founders get to present each month and there's usually no fee's involved, other than perhaps a small entry fee to help cover the meeting location if it's not sponsored.
I think Austin is an excellent location for a startup. You have good high tech infrastructure, a good college that (at least in the 1990s) put out CS students who actually had a clue, a very supportive community, low cost of living (again at least it was), etc. And a large number of very intelligent engineers.
Also, I wonder if something like the effect that we see in the Windows shareware market vs. the Mac shareware market isn't also happening with investors. Mac shareware authors make more money because the mac market is smaller. While the windows market is larger, the proportion of shareware authors is even larger, crowding out your product. So, its more profitable to target the smaller market.
VCs in Texas are more likely to fund a company in Texas... there may be more VCs in California than there are in Texas but there are a lot more startups in california competing for the funding.
I started my second company in Austin...and moved it to the Bay Area for WFP2007. The Bay Area is better. And not just by a little bit. My first company was started in Houston and moved to Austin for the better tech environment, but it turns out there's just not much really going on in Austin when you compare it to Silicon Valley. A few users groups and small conferences (plus SXSW, which is worth noting) does not a tech industry make.
I miss Austin for the things that make Austin wonderful, but I don't think I'll ever go there to start a technology startup (unless things change remarkably in the future). And Mountain View and San Francisco are both great places to live, even if they aren't as cool as Austin.
I'm from Austin as well. Plenty of entrepreneurs, plenty of engineers, and enough funding sources. All the pieces are there - I think what we're missing is a real tech startup community.
