The most unfair advantage seems to be: be a "foreign" founder with deep connections to a network outside the Bay Area (could be India, but could also be UMich..). Relocate to SF, do your startup here, raise money here, hire initial people either here, or have people from "home" move out for your company.
Later, open an engineering office in your "home" location to take advantage of non-SV hiring possibilities. You can get started on this in a limited way by contracting work back "home", especially for non-core functions.
Basically every Israeli successful startup ever. (Eng office in Israel, sales office in the Bay Area or NYC, with senior leadership being very familiar with the US market and often present. Maybe less required now, but still a winning strategy).
I also saw a bunch of YC companies started by foreign (non-US) founders take advantage of deep networks at home.
MIT alumni companies also recruit pretty heavily from MIT even if they move to SFBA, etc. I assume other college alumni networks are the same way.
Countless companies do it at the enterprise level, or even much smaller. A dedicated Indian engineering team can be managed more like an in-house team than rented contractors.
In terms of logistics, I would love to know how to go about this like setting up office in India being a US company etc. Any online resource to tap ? I doubt my local accountant will have any clue.
US C-Corp or the likes which is owned by the shareholders. Then C-Corp owns 100% of the shares of the company of subsidiary (depending on jurisdiction there maybe legal limitations imposed). Then there is usually an 'agreement' where all IP generated by sub. is owned by parent company, and parent company pays X to sub. company for services (which are usually 100% match to the expenses). Sub. company hires and manages the employees and deals with local taxes, etc.
This of course, depends on size of the companies (both parent and subsidiary) and countries and then there are a bunch of agreements to make sure everything is above board, but pretty much works this way.
source: just had a friend's company that went through doing that, having a Delaware parent company and a subsidiary setup in Portugal.
There are many companies that do this, from the start even. You get situations where an early employee wants to move back home and to keep him they have him start an eng office back home.
Later, open an engineering office in your "home" location to take advantage of non-SV hiring possibilities. You can get started on this in a limited way by contracting work back "home", especially for non-core functions.