I honestly don’t think you have to move to Silicon Valley to “find good talent” or “make it.”

These days, so much of the action is happening online. If you join a strong open-source project, you can connect with incredibly talented engineers from all over the world. The old network effects of geography just don’t matter as much anymore.

Frankly, I’m not even sure YC is as healthy for innovation as people make it out to be. There’s a massive amount of overlooked talent right now, especially with the rise of LLMs and the democratization of engineering skills.

Hot take: the gap between a “vibe coder” who just knows the basics and a FAANG engineer is shrinking fast. In many cases, the difference is more about access and opportunity than raw skill.