I disagree with most of your point.
Most of those Seattle companies came about in more recent times. Seattle is not equitable or in the same league as SF. Amazon was founded in the late 1990s and was very small throughout the 2000s. It went through hyper growth in the 2010s that made it into what it was. Same with Expedia and Costco. Microsoft took a foothold in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
These were by no means “established players” in 1984 when Austin was a small town. So if Seattle can do it, then why not Austin? Austin in 2020 has way more going for it in human capital, money, allure, and talent than Seattle had in 1990. Both UT and UW are identically excellent schools for CS, engineering, digital animation, and other tech related fields. A lot of the major disruptions in the SF Bay Area today were founded after the year 2000, so if SF can develop and cultivate startups that become major established players in a short period of time then why can’t Austin? Why can’t any of Austin’s startups become as big and major as Tesla, Netflix, Uber, Salesforce, Square, Roku, etc. all of these companies were founded after the year 2000. Maybe it’s not fair comparing to SF because of the money and capital there but against places like Seattle, LA, or Minneapolis? That’s fair game. Austin in theory should be able to compete advantageously against most of those cities and in most ways it can except for the whole corporate HQ thing.
Also you have the wrong idea. I love Austin, a lot, just being critical of the one thing it doesn’t have. I just don’t like it when people make excuses like “Austin is still small” or “Austin tried but it’s companies got bought out”. In my eyes, excuses highlight how Austin isn’t trying hard enough. You can’t keep settling for companies based somewhere else opening campuses for you. You need to create (or lure) major players that everywhere wants on your own too.
Fact of the matter is that Austin needs way more HQs. Even Charlotte, which is a new city without the educational institutions, money, or talent of Austin has some big time players. Honeywell just moved there last year. Not to mention cities like Cincinnati, Denver, Minneapolis, Hartford, etc which are in Austin’s weight class but have a bigger list of major HQs/F1000s.
3D printing was invented in Austin by Carl Deckard but Deckard moved his 3D printing company to South Carolina. Why?
http://siliconhillsnews.com/2014/08/...-ut-in-austin/
Austin needs more. I don’t care how hard people work at those campuses. I want Austin to have it’s own companies that everyone wants. Not to just be a place always hoping that somewhere else’s companies expand there or set up roots. There’s nothing wrong with that but it can’t be the only game in town.
And you keep saying that Austin won’t develop its own major HQs in the near term and then say “that’s not a bad thing.” Sorry, but that is a bad thing. A very bad thing.