Should You Move Your Company to Silicon Valley? - Eric Migicovsky, Pebble Founder

TL;DR

Moving a startup to Silicon Valley is strongly beneficial if your customers are there, due to unparalleled network density and a performance‑pushing environment. The major downside is high cost of living and hiring. If you have local customers or an unfair advantage elsewhere, staying may be better, but you should still build a Bay Area network.

Key insights

• The primary reason to move to Silicon Valley is proximity to customers – enables faster iteration and feedback.
• The high‑density network provides serendipitous access to top tech talent and experienced founders (e.g., meeting an open‑source creator at a coffee shop, having lunch with an original Macintosh team
• The network is especially valuable at inflection points (e.g., Pebble’s Kickstarter night – 2 am burgers with a YC friend to chart the course).