Comment by gradschoolfail

You are probably right.

However, if your issues are tied to local characteristics, then (in maybe an abstract way) you still have another fundamental obstacle to scalability, not related to compensation..

(FWIW i think an interesting related question is whether YC might be able to scale outside SF if they werent so into the slogan “do things that dont scale” — which i sometimes interpret as the viridical paradox “scale by not scaling”)