I've never lived outside of the East Coast / mid-West, but what you're saying sounds feasible. That said, I'd guess that the "who are you? What is your background?" question is more of a Boston thing than a New York thing, since New York doesn't have the Puritan / Boston Brahman caste system. I've known of a number of people who went to state schools or random unknown schools in New Jersey who've done reasonably well here.

I also wonder if the weather has anything to do with the mentality.

Winters in the East Coast are harsh so it forces people to be more 'realistic'. Whereas the sub tropical West Coast gives people an environment to think in more imaginitive ways.

Also Juicero was headquarted in San Fran?

Juicero may have headquartered in San Fran because it was the "cool thing to do", but the founder lives in Brooklyn. I suspect that the San Fran HQ was HQ in name only.

Weather certainly does have an effect on culture. That said, the East Coast vs. West Coast, U.S. vs the World rivalry is mostly contrived, and claims that one area is more innovative than another are dubious. It's reasonable to claim that the Bay Area has more of an engineering-centric culture, but that is likely due to a) Intel and b) the presence of multiple well-funded National Labs within close proximity.

If you look at the case of Leland Stanford, for instance, you'll notice that he maintained pretty deep personal and economic ties with his hometown of Albany up until his death- a lot of his success wouldn't have been possible if he hadn't been able to rely upon his extended family in the East Coast for support.

Stanford University was actually originally supposed to be in Albany, but was the location was switched to Palo Alto- allegedly because people got greedy. Instead Albany got a children's orphanage sponsored by Stanford's wife, which didn't last past the 30s. [1]

[1] http://alloveralbany.com/archive/2010/10/01/why-stanford-isn...