"If your idea for a web business is more along the lines of the mundane "product * price = profit" (3P) variety, I think the culture of San Francisco and that famous 20-mile radius around Stanford is anything but helpful. I might even go as far as say it's downright harmful.

The flush availability of other people's money is simply too tempting. When you're not spending your own money, it's easy to splash on a big open office on day one, a staff of 10+ in no time, and have few worries about paying the bills on the 1st of the month. It takes away much of the urgency to make money that I think is critical to build sustainable businesses. It gives you too many resources to be satisfied building simple tools for niche markets. Everything becomes about catching that huge wave."

--David, Signal vs, Noise, writing about start up stuff, like where to locate your endeavor