The best AI founders in the world are moving here

TL;DR

San Francisco, after a COVID-era decline and a historical pattern of boom‑bust cycles, is experiencing a resurgence driven by AI (“Cerebral Valley”). The core argument is that the city’s density of ambitious builders creates powerful network effects that “manufacture luck,” and any founder serious about maximizing their odds should move there.

Key insights

• In 2007, basing a company in San Francisco (vs. Palo Alto or the Peninsula) carried a negative connotation of being unserious, tied to the dot‑com era’s opportunists.
• Y Combinator’s move from Mountain View to San Francisco significantly accelerated the city’s tech concentration, partly by pulling young founders away from the suburbs.
• The “skyscraper” building in North Beach (Crystal Towers) housed so many YC companies that dense geographic clustering became a self‑reinforcing luck‑generator.