If the engineers are just middlemen for plumbing that money to property owners, seems like owning property in the Bay Area might be a good idea.

It seems there is the opportunity to disrupt that market, so that tech companies can pay property owners directly, without the middlemen.

That's not nearly disruptive enough. I'm raising seed rounds for HackerRV - a high end, compact RV rentals for knowledge workers that does away with the need for houses. Starlink comes standard, with additional subscriptions available for showers at aelect locations, and mail delivery addresses. Our previous venture (BackyardBnB) was scuttled by literal NIMBYs.

Or they can disrupt the actual middleman, which is the property owners. The land is there regardless of who owns it, it turns out.

That was the policy intention in the 70s. Prop 13 plus zoning most land area for SFH ensured that boomer property owners could get rich. Back then it wasn't clear just how rich, though.

older generations did just that. In the Internet boom, people commonly talked about "place being obsolete" and other detached thinking.. perhaps lessening the emphasis on buying real property nearby. Of course, not everyone played by the same rule book. Observe the result.

Sure I'd rather have $1m in FAANG shares than SF real estate over 10 years but maybe I am wrong.

Especially as SF real estate relies on NIMBYism that might change whereas FAANG relies on an enormous brain trust, branding and monopolies.

You don't have to live in Bay Area to run startup?..

I think it massive improves your odds of a unicorn. But a regular old business aiming for a humble $10m valuation based on profits, of course not.