Snowball is certainly a good analogy. In my brief experience, success yields to more success, especially with business development deals. If you're close to a company, you're more likely to do business with it. That makes a big network effect from the number of startups in the area.

So your stress level could snowball, or you might leverage strength over strength. Even if stress were an issue, my happiness is definitely tied more to the direction Tipjoy is going than the excess of companies around me.

Unfortunately, the other side to my original comment was lost. I think TechStars is great, and more people doing startups is great. I didn't mean for this to become a debate about the relative strengths of cities.