REDWOOD CITY, Calif. — By all rights, Felix Wong and his company should be in Massachusetts.

Wong, 33, was born in Quincy, graduated from Braintree High School, and spent a decade living in Cambridge, where he earned two degrees from Harvard and worked as a post-doc at MIT. His parents still live in Massachusetts, and he now leads a startup in biotech, an industry Boston has owned for the better part of two decades.

But on a recent Wednesday, Wong was in sunny Silicon Valley, walking in the shade of the jacaranda trees near the hiking trail outside his office and reflecting on the creative spirit of California.