I grew up in Silicon Valley, at the very beginning of the personal computer revolution and its attendant startup boom. So perhaps it was inevitable that I’d start some tech companies, or spend my life in various entrepreneurial pursuits.

But I grew up in Silicon Valley also largely by chance. My parents, born and bred New Yorkers, headed out West only after my father matched post-med-school at Stanford’s residency program. Just as easily, he could have ended up at a hospital here in New York, or in Boston, or down in DC. And I always wonder, had I been born in any of those places, might I have been more likely to follow a different path?

Would a childhood in DC have pulled me into politics? Would Boston have kept me in the world of medicine? Here in New York, would I have leaned towards banking and the public markets?

My best guess: definitely.

As Malcom Gladwell points out in his (admittedly less than stellar) Outliers, it’s all too easy to overlook the power of place. Which is something I’ve been thinking about of late, as Jess and I still, slowly, mull over where we’d like to live, in both the short and long term.

In theory, with technology of all kinds flattening distances, physical location should matter less and less. But, in practice, that hardly seems to be the case. In just the past few days, I’ve met a dozen or so people at events around the city, all of whom intersect in some interesting way with my work at Cyan, or Jess’ work in the fashion world, or with CrossFit NYC, or with something else somehow relevant to our life. And, indeed, those serendipitous meetings, the building of new weak ties, is exactly what you lose in absenting yourself from a physical community.

The problem is, those communities are also quite specific. So far as I can see, the only place where substantial pockets of fashion, film, and finance people intersect is right here in New York City. So, toy as we might with fantasies of complete escape, Portland, Maine becomes practical only if I’m ready to switch careers to lobstering.

Still, there’s an upside to this line of thought. After a decade of life in Manhattan, and as a relative newlywed, it’s all too easy to lapse into eating lunch in the office, into spending the evening at home with Jess on the couch. So it’s good to be occasionally reminded that the only way we can justify the crazy rents, small footprints, and booming street noise of our New York offices and apartment is to get out of them, and to meet the slew of smart, interesting people all around this city.