Sounds like a great place to live, but you haven't listed anything particularly advantageous to startups vs any other kind of business. The reasons why SV, NYC

Sounds like a great place to live, but you haven't listed anything particularly advantageous to startups vs any other kind of business. The reasons why SV, NYC, and a handful of other places attract startups en masse: 1. First and foremost, high concentration of local investors with the right risk culture - they're both financially and emotionally able to invest in, say, 100 startups, knowing 90 will fail and lose all their money, 9 will just break even, and maybe 1 will be Google or Facebook and make back all their losses and then some. Very few places in the world have internalized that understanding of risk throughout their entire culture, but it is absolutely required for a flourishing startup scene. 2. High concentration of good bets, aka smart/skilled/highly educated/etc people capable of building new businesses with a potential 10x, 100x, or more payoff, and willing to forgo a comfortable corporate salary to sacrifice everything for a few years to do that. Typically young kids without families and mortgages, but not exclusively so. Again, very few places in the world have a high concentration of such highly skilled people willing and able to accept that opportunity cost. 3. Enough skilled and experienced talent who may not be willing/able to do a startup, but are willing and able to join one and build it up once it gets some funding or revenue and is over that initial risk barrier. 4. Helps to have some world-class something or other, be it a city like NYC or a university like Stanford, or even just a freewheeling creative culture with enough local money Austin (I suspect from both Dell and the TX oil industry). In fact, without knowing much about Imperial Valley, your best model might be Austin, TX. Both NYC and SV benefited local and history (NYC), and war research funding (Stanford/SV), both of which played out over a very long time. They weren't made overnight. Austin might be a better model of how to grow a startup scene from scratch, but not sure. I also know Charleston, SC is working on incubating a startup hub, and NC's Research Triangle Park has been a hub of sorts for a while, but with more emphasis on medical/biology. Maybe some of those can give you some ideas. [1]:http://www.fastcompany.com/1839445/introducing-silicon-harbor-charleston-sc-home-twitpic-and-amazons-createspace http://www.fastcompany.com/1839445/introducing-silicon-harbo...