My argument would be - don't convince people to move there, hire the people already there. Identify the pioneers who do want to move and incentivize them to do

My argument would be - don't convince people to move there, hire the people already there. Identify the pioneers who do want to move and incentivize them to do so as well. Here's an example from a recent client in Seattle. Two year old company, approx. ten employees, hiring at least one person a month. Couple hundred square feet of class-a office space, likely $42/square foot and increasing. Turned over nearly all of their staff on a yearly basis because they couldn't compete with comp at Amazon, Microsoft, etc. Had a number of entry-level type clerical jobs that they were outsourcing to India but doing so unsuccessfully (IE: the resources they had weren't particularly cheap but also didn't really have the necessary skills). Same entry-level jobs couldn't pay quite enough in Seattle to incentivize someone to either stick around or be willing to commute from the suburbs (unless they were really desperate). My point to them time and time again was - they were a small company, undercapitalized like many small businesses, and they were spending stupid money every month on people and office space that made no sense given their business. They could have moved to Spokane, Yakima, the Tri-Cities or lots of other cheaper places even in the same state and been able to find the talent they need and cut their office costs in half. Given the nature of their business, sure, maybe they needed to keep a couple people (mostly sales / execs / bizdev) in Seattle - but even those could have worked from home. Last I checked, the largest concentration of PhDs in the country is in... the Tri-Cities, Washington. The state with the greatest number of college graduates per capita is... Iowa. These are not exactly places on anyone's radar. Bend, Oregon has a growing number of people who "commute" to Silicon Valley. I live in the middle of nowhere, but there are a growing number of people from Seattle willing to move here (and occasionally take the 45 minute commuter flight) in order to escape the cost and crowding of living over there. Boise is growing entirely by people fleeing from coastal cities. Someone in this thread posted Paul Graham's essay about startup hubs, which I recall reading and it gels exactly with my thinking as well - go to these micro hubs around the country and be part of growing them from within.