Yes, there are local businesses everywhere. But there aren't startups (with the aim of fast growth through innovation, usually helped along by venture capital)

Yes, there are local businesses everywhere. But there aren't startups (with the aim of fast growth through innovation, usually helped along by venture capital) everywhere. The local scene matters. Most importantly, it affects the rate of people starting companies. If there are other startups around you, you can learn from them. You may not think things like accelerators, meetups, and startup-related college talks matter, but that stuff is really key for creating first-time founders. As far as investors, it matters in angel + seed rounds, but matters far less past that (because you can fly to your investors). But having a way to access those early investors (when founders are still learning how to talk to investors, and trying to raise the money to run a company full-time) is very important. I think it's probably a lot easier for a second-time founder to start a company outside of a "scene". But even in that case, having a larger talent pool is nice, and the convenience of being closer to investors. All of the cities you mentioned (besides Des Moines, Iowa) have at least some sort of startup scene that I've heard of. It's a power-law distribution, but for most founders the value of moving from Des Moines to NYC, or from Boston to SV, is pretty compelling.