Basically any place with a university and access to the internet is a good enough place for the right founder to build something of quality.
This is true, but making a successful startup requires a lot more than building a quality initial product. Although successful companies can be founded virtually anywhere, the domain knowledge needed to grow and scale a technology startup is concentrated in certain geographies—especially Silicon Valley and San Francisco. In terms of tech entrepreneur social networks and institutional knowledge about investment, growth, scaling, etc., Boston is far behind the Bay Area, and the gap is growing every day.
> the domain knowledge needed to grow and scale a technology startup
This is a common enough claim that it could be considered "common knowledge," and I wouldn't be in a good position to refute it even if I could figure out what exactly the claim is.
Is the claim that it takes specific domain knowledge to convince people with money to invest in a business? That it takes specific domain knowledge to scale up a sw/hw infrastructure to handle top-tier web application workloads? That is takes specific domain knowledge to hire teams of engineers?
All of those things are true, of course, but in what way is any of that domain knowledge particularly concentrated in SV or the Bay Area?
The concentration of already-exited former-founders is higher, and that's real, but at the end of the day we're still talking about Software Businesses. Is the problem of converting value-laden software to revenue streams really all that exotic and complicated, such that only people in a particular social network have cracked it?
> the gap is growing every day
Again, a) by what metric, and b) even if true n-1 of the last n days, it's a big world out here and a lot of it writes code and attacks problems.
*institutional knowledge about investment, growth, scaling, etc.
This might always be the case for East Coast startups. You start a business, you need investors that understand your business.
I hypothesize that if you start a tech business in Boston -- and succeed -- you're more likely to move someplace warmer, or cheaper, or back to your home state (or mother country), or to a place that has lots of startups in your field to invest your money because you understand their business.
The East Coast has a lot of great talent. The scale of their new talent cultivation is likely unrivaled even by the Bay Area. It's just that Boston isn't home for many of its most successful.
This is true, but making a successful startup requires a lot more than building a quality initial product. Although successful companies can be founded virtually anywhere, the domain knowledge needed to grow and scale a technology startup is concentrated in certain geographies—especially Silicon Valley and San Francisco. In terms of tech entrepreneur social networks and institutional knowledge about investment, growth, scaling, etc., Boston is far behind the Bay Area, and the gap is growing every day.