And thank you, Slim Shady…

There’s no doubt that the technology sector has become less tethered to the big cities and major tech hubs – Silicon Valley, New York City and Boston spring to mind – as a result of now long-standing Draconian lockdowns. The exodus from the Bay Area in particular has been well documented. According to The New York Times, They Can’t Leave the Bay Area Fast Enough. After all, The Times noted, “Rent was astronomical. Taxes were high. Your neighbors didn’t like you. If you lived in San Francisco, you might have commuted an hour south to your job at Apple or Google or Facebook. Or if your office was in the city, maybe it was in a neighborhood with too much street crime, open drug use and $5 coffees…But it was worth it. Living in the epicenter of a boom that was changing the world was what mattered. The city gave its workers a choice of interesting jobs and a chance at the brass ring.”

That was then. This is now and precisely to where has the sector gravitated?  “They fled to states without income taxes like Texas and Florida,” said The Times.

This we know, and from what we read and from the conversations in which we have participated on Clubhouse, many people have put down roots in their new locations. In fact, one investor said, “Why should I live in Silicon Valley? I can buy a home in Austin for a third of what I paid in the Valley and buy a plane and fly back if I need to – and still come out ahead!”

Especially since, as a California resident, he was being taxed on the value of his portfolio, including companies that may not live up to their potential at the end of the day– and there’s no give backs with the tax man.

May be time to wake up to the fact that Silicon Valley may be over and to remember that, prior to the Internet Era, Boston was the undisputable capital of the tech world.

It can happen.

Silicon Valley’s share of venture capital expected to drop below 20% for the first time this year, said CNBC. “Remote work makes it easier for talent to live outside of Silicon Valley and capital is following the trend,” Cameron Stanfill, a senior analyst at PitchBook points out. “You no longer need to be down the street from your investor if you are an entrepreneur.”

“If you’re an entrepreneur, it is probably easier to raise a VC round in Miami right now than CA,” venture capitalist (and former Silicon Valley/now-Miami resident) Keith Rabois said in Big Technology.

Given all of the relocation, who is actually winning the war to attract those fleeing the big cities?,” asked inc...”the short answer is a bunch of cities you probably haven’t heard much about, including:

Madison, Wisconsin (which saw a whopping 74 percent increase in the inflow of tech workers)

Cleveland

Sacramento

Minneapolis-St. Paul

Hartford, Connecticut”

And note to self: important to follow the talent.

Time will tell, but the bigger picture – and the larger question – is: while all of this movement is certainly threatening the dominance of the ‘superstar’ tech hubs, at this point, has ‘Silicon Valley’ become a sort of a generic or more figurative term, similar to ‘Band Aid®’ when referring to adhesive strips? Time to give the now rising new hubs their due and much the way the tech sector itself did, leave ‘Silicon Valley’ behind, just as people, slowly but in an unshakably steady stream, have been leaving not only the physical area but also segments of the cabal itself behind, including current social media megaliths Twitter and Facebook/Instagram. No one stays on top forever, including the tech hubs themselves, and may be time to wake up to yet another New Normal. To believe that Silicon Valley, both literally and figuratively, is still what it once was, at this point, is simply California dreaming.

Onward and forward.