Interesting to hear so much good about CMU: Long the president there was one of my Ph.D. dissertation advisers. > Honestly, there's just not a lot of places t

Interesting to hear so much good about CMU: Long the president there was one of my Ph.D. dissertation advisers. > Honestly, there's just not a lot of places that qualify. I'm not so sure location has much to do with it or that there is much a location can do that would help. But for places: Sure, within 100 miles of the Washington Monument. Federal spending? Awash in it. For technology? Same. Universities? Johns Hopkins, Maryland College Park, Maryland Baltimore County, Catholic, American, Georgetown, George Mason, VPI, UVA. VCs? There are some. There is Boston with Harvard and MIT and no lack of Federal research spending. And lots of VCs and bigger bucks, too. Then, sure, there is NYC: Universities? Columbia, Rockefeller, and NYU and a new, growing tech educational center on Roosevelt Island. VCs? Plenty of them, and bigger bucks, too. Can make a good case for a large fraction of the college towns around major US universities, e.g., the Big Ten. Maybe the bottleneck is elsewhere, say, finding the next Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle, Sun, Google, Facebook? If there is one and it goes through YC, then it's not in stealth anymore and, if it looks really good, can set up shop the same place as that 900 pound gorilla -- anywhere it wants to. Net, I'm not sure location has much to do with it. And I'm not sure that the 25-29 age range PG has in mind is now the most promising. And, net, net, IMHO the bottleneck is just better ideas.