All the three problem areas you identified are reasons why I would not move to SF until we are ready. If I see that the idea has traction, and revenue, and I didnt care about finding investors and talent, then I would think of moving to SF. Today, what we have built and is currently building, is still a pet project. We are keenly watching where it goes from here, but simply cannot move mid-sentence to the other coast.
Good luck though. You are much better positioned due to the YC framework and which should open doors far more easily than to a couple of outliers like us.
You're too close to the forest to see the trees. Forget you are a hacker for a minute and think of yourself as say a screenplay writer. Where would you rather be, LA or some hicksville town ? If you are in LA and you bump into some two-bit actress moonlighting in a bar and talk about your script, soon, she'll connect you to someone who knows someone else who knows something who will soon reshape your unsellable script into something that can actually get made and within a span of a few weeks you'll be on a studio lot while they go over the makeup of a costar you only saw on TV until yesterday! Sounds like complete baloney, but that's how it really works!! You can read say William Goldman's book Adventures in Screen Trade where he spells it out in considerable detail - Why professors with PhD in literature are still working on the nth draft of their dream project in the English Dept at Andover while some street smart dropout hacks away at a script on a couch in some dinghy motel on Hollywood Blvd that actually gets made.
It ain't fair but that's how it is.
In you go to SF with your pet project which has no traction and revenue, it will suddenly have traction and revenue. Don't ask me how. It isn't exactly logical. Things happen. You'll meet people who'll tell you if only you change this feature and add that feature and do this and not that you'll have a saleable proposition. So you'll say what the hell and give it a shot and soon it becomes so! Its just not rational, and as a coder and mathematician I hate irrationality just as much as you. But that's how it is.
Whereas with no such brutal feedback, you can labor away at some precious project until it becomes larger than life and super-brittle and soon even you don't want to touch it cause who knows which module will break which other module, and then you go looking for customers and nobody really wants it cause its gotten way too complex for anybody to decipher.
I've heard ideas that are so lame ( an app that counts ONE TWO THREE while you do pushups. Really! Yeah, that's got funding to the tune of a couple mil! ) your 3 year old could have come up with it. So its not the traction, framework, revenue model etc. Its just finetuning an idea to the point where it becomes saleable. And for whatever reason, perhaps because its in their DNA, SV seems to have the sort of people who actually give you a listen and then tell you exactly how to go about it. They actually give a damn! If you have an idea, I think you should atleast spend 1-2 weeks in SV trying to pitch before writing it off as a futile exercise. Nothing to lose, everything to gain.
I agree that its better to be in LA than in some podunk town working on a script if you wanted a movie to be made. Because movie making has not exactly been democratized to the extent that software development and creating businesses has been.
However, if what I have is a piss poor idea that has not won over customers, has no traction or revenue, then I dont think thats a problem a million dollar can solve. It will just be someone else's money that I will end up losing over a terrible idea. I would rather fail with this idea where I am now, than work on it (with someone else's money) for the next year and then still fail.
The Valley entices everyone to go there. I both drank the koolaid in 99 and ran for cover in the wake of the dotcom crash. Entrepreneurs who persevered were the ones who coupled the right ideas with a sense of commitment bordering on the insane. Thats what I want to emulate. That, to me is more tangible than a million dollars.
You missed the parent's point. It's not the money of Silicon Valley that helps you, it's the constant brainstorming of ideas. You will be exposed to so much collective experience that your product will improve. On the surface, it will seem to be magic, since really it's the same idea you had when you lived in the middle of nowhere.
Except you benefit from talking to people with deep experience. When someone here tells you "have you tried putting this button on that page?", it's because they did it and it doubled your traffic. Experience of what works and what doesn't circulates so much faster in Silicon Valley.
Why would you want to be disconnected from the flow of ideas? If you think online forums are a substitute, they are, but with a time delay.
Good luck though. You are much better positioned due to the YC framework and which should open doors far more easily than to a couple of outliers like us.