Exactly my point. The hacker clique was born in college, and it will take something to break into it once it has been established and relocates to SF.

My point is this--I suspect that relocating yourself to San Francisco with an idea but without hacker friends that already live there (or ones that plan to) isn't going to get you very far. It would seem that everyone in the valley is very focused on their idea and bringing it to fruition and doesn't have any intention of letting you in on their venture just because you happen to also now live in the Bay Area.

Maybe I'm wrong, though; maybe there is a place where post-college hackers in the bay (PCHITB) freely mingle such that newcomers sans partners/friends can enter into their startup, which is otherwise a closed (intentionally so) society; maybe this is a part of the essence of things like Y-Combinator dinners, super happy dev house, etc. Just thinking outloud at this point. :-)

There are lots of super intelligent, but dissatisfied, hackers that work at 500+ employee companies in the bay. However, they have a different problem. Somehow you have to convince them to ditch the gold-plated handcuffs and take a big risk to do something with you. This is hard, but maybe not as hard as breaking into a 2 person venture....

True. But we're not encouraging anyone to go work at those companies just to meet dissatisfied hackers, are we? :-) Incidentally, that's how I met my co-founder--although that's not why I joined the company in the first place (that was because I was needed a job). :-)