- organic pipeline of talent. Typically a university or two within commuting range. Generally needs a city. Hence, SF/SJ, but potentially also Paris, London, Berlin etc.
- access to capital at all stages of life. Its not enough to seed or do class A, you need investors and ppl who understand the game for a decade or more. Maybe London. Maybe Berlin. Pre-crackdown HK perhaps. Definitely SV.
- Tolerance for failure, pivot to new opps, etc. I cant think of any Euro investing community that is as tolerant as the US.
- a large, culturally unified market on your doorstep. Frankly this is the US, China and India and absolutely not the EU/UK. The Single Market is intellectually unified but not culturally unified. X in Greece will never be like X in Germany.
I'd love to see a multi polar SV universe, but I just cant see it happening anytime soon. I can see alternatives to SV in the US, such as Seattle and NYC, but we are not quite there yet and SV had unique advantages in its early years (1965 to 1975) that would be very hard to replicate now.