> The best part was the sheer technical talent in the US
This is just nonsense. What set the US apart is its mass and ecosystem.
What is just a good idea in any other country gets 10k users as a side project. Whereas in the US it can more easily become a multi-million VC backed 'homogenous' product for its massive population/market.
Popular tech is rarely the best at a technical level (even when the best is developed within the US), it just has more opportunity to acquire weight and momentum to become the default choice for a problem-space.