San Francisco seems to have found its niche with B2C while the South Bay focussed on heavier stuff, e.g. satellites, ML, et cetera. Highly-correlated markets, but similarly distinct as New York and Long Island.
Maybe outside of demo days ("organic" vc or whatever you'd call it), it becomes a factor due to people walking into offices or other lead generation efforts.
It's also hard to believe that late stage financings (which are larger but less frequent) care at all about location, given that so many of them are from outside the geography entirely, including international.
If you have stats from something more quantified that would be interesting.
"New York Metro Area"
"LA/Orange County"
and of course the whole of "New England" -- yup an area that takes almost 10 hours to drive tip to tip: https://goo.gl/abZHs7
It's clearly an intellectually dishonest maneuver to split SF from Silicon Valley. Done probably just so they can generate the headline "San Francisco's VC boom is over".
Maybe not how it should be, but certainly how it is; with a new Bay crossing slated for 2040 at the earliest it'll be like that for a while.
And some people apparently think "second Bay crossing" refers exclusively to a road, which is not what I meant
Comparing to Palo Alto where you either have to take Caltrain and take what feels like a double digit risk of a multi-hour delay, or else a hour plus drive, compared to the 15 minutes it takes to get from FiDi to downtown Oakland is just ridiculous on its face. I've lived in both Oakland and Palo Alto, and anyone complaining about SF <-> Oakland commute has no sense of Bay Area commute perspective.
* Kidding, but there are people like this.
Sketchiness? Yeah, Soma has homeless people and some unpleasant crowds on 6th St and spread throughout; but it doesn't even come close to the sketchiness of pretty much anywhere in Oakland. I've had guns pulled on me on the outskirts Rockridge and that's supposed to be the nicest part of Oakland… don't really see that as likely to happen in Soma.
What then, weather? Soma has the sunniest weather in SF, but still remains temperate year round. When everyone across the bay is melting in 95 degree heat in summer, Soma stays a nice and cool windy but sunny 75.
SV investors (including YC) opened some offices up in SF, but well before that they were driving up and having meetings in other offices.
Not to mention that most of Canada's population - Greater Vancouver and the Windsor-Quèbec corridor - border the most left leaning regions of the US excluding California; the Pacific Northwest and the Northeastern US respectively. Alberta politics are roughly similar to those of Montana or the Dakotas.