Terrible weather, flat terrain, socially conservative populace, lower probabilities of meeting important or rich people to create network. These qualities don't seem like they would appeal for those with money or in tech/science oriented fields.
There's a lot of really smart people in the Midwest who will dedicate themselves to your cause because they have a family to take care of. The midwest will probably never be competitive for top AI talent, but it already has some of the hardest working, and most loyal talent.
Most companies don't need genius, they just need someone with a lot of grit. The Midwest has vast swaths of folks with grit.
It's very hard to justify devoting years of your life to working on something believed to be impossible or a waste of time if you have a family to support, and a deep-seated belief in using your time productively.
The startup culture is not here of course, but the reasons are not the ones you list.
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-venture-capital-deal...
(I don't know if you're right or wrong, I'm just trying to learn something.)
I meant no offense. I simply had no idea how much data or reasoning backed up your statement.
Often times certain rural districts can be more backwards, which is how you get Michele Bachmann & Amy Klobuchar coming out of the same state.
Chicago is going more blue while the rest of the state gets more red: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/data/ct-illinois-presiden...
This story is playing out across America.
Nonsense.
The vast majority of the counties across the Midwest are solidly red, even if the urban population centers are blue.
If weather mattered all that much, the coast from LA to San Diego would be where you'd want to go.
Boston/NYC have the benefits of being in very highly populated areas with very old institutions, especially with reputations like MIT/Harvard/Columbia/etc and there's already a lot of money floating around, so that makes up for the weather part a little. It's not just one factor, it's a combination of all of these that unfortunately make some places more desirable to live in than others. And who knows, may be it will change in the future.
CA has more natural boundaries that spike the cost of living higher. For example, pretty much the entire LA area (except around Palmdale) consists of a bunch of small valleys nestled between mountains. Not only do they have the west coast in the way, but they've got mountains blocking them from expanding in every other direction.
And you can say the same thing about the Bay Area, too. If expansion isn't blocked by water, it's blocked by mountains.
NYC's COL is also in large part due to natural boundaries, but it's not as bad as CA. Manhattan is a tiny island. Long Island is also, well, an island. The Bronx and Westchester are a peninsula. But there's at least some room to expand. The Hudson Valley opens up when you get north of White Plains, and Jersey has plenty of room to sprawl. So the COL isn't nearly as bad as SF. What really keeps it as high as it is, though, is culture: Manhattan is the center of the world, and that's exactly how New Yorkers like it. There's a massive stigma to setting up shop in places like Morristown or Ossining. So instead everyone either pays $$$$$ to live near work in Manhattan or they pay $$$$ live in the suburbs but not so far out in the suburbs that they can't commute to Manhattan every day.
In the midwest and the southwest, on the other hand, there's no stigma to setting up shop in suburban edge cities. So you have metro areas like Dallas where there are large tech hubs in suburbs like Plano and Richardson, and some companies now are setting up shop in the exurbs.
Morristown isn't some haven for bumpkins, it's a major stop on the Morristown Line with a lot of wealthy people. Maybe there's a sigma for setting up a tech shop, but it's not some backwater where nobody wants to live.
It's a bedroom community for people who commute to Manhattan. A very nice, wealthy bedroom community, but still a bedroom community. The NY metro area has yet to embrace edge cities, and if it ever does (I'm not holding my breath) the COL will become much less of an issue.
Tell that to the huge Asian population in Dallas. It's not quite the Midwest, but it's still the Great Plains and the culture is similar.
The Indian and Chinese food here is second to none, and we're one of the most diverse metro areas in the country. Also, while Asians may prefer the Democrats' stances on immigration, they are often deeply socially conservative, just as much as any white Southern Baptist, and they tend to form extremely conservative ethnic enclaves.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Texas
Skiing, hiking, and climbing are 3 important things to me that the midwest simply doesn't have in any meaningful way.
There's some good rock climbing sure, but there's no alpine climbing.