Which States Have the Best Startup Environments?

The point of the analysis is to answer the question "if you're a team that has identified a promising market and looking to build a product, where should you be?"

Nah - Funding comes, by definition, from people with money. The coasts are much wealthier than inlands. Hence, more funding. Founders often agree to really draconian terms - they're not going to Cali for employee protection laws.

There's currently lots of technology and funding in Silicon Valley, so founders and investors both go there. It's cyclical - if there was as good of an environment with less regulation and laws, it'd attract even more. Actually, there are examples of that: recent example #1 is the crazy-fast ascent of Ireland into a European key business center, and Dubai built from desert nothing wasteland into grandiose world finance center is recent example #2.

Edit: Also, no one actually enforces noncomps unless things end in a nasty way. Then it's just a tiny bit of leverage if things already went south. If you don't go to a director competitor in a hostile way during the noncomp period, employers don't care. And if the duration or geography isn't very concise, they're invalid in court. Non-comp not such a big deal. Intellectual property assignment is serious though.

And, Wyoming is dead last in dollars for funding, but second in tax environments. Clearly Wyoming has a sparsely populated state, but per capita was supposed to account for that.

As a native Marylander, I am a bit intrigued by how the recent tax changes targeted at businesses will effect this sort of data. It is already seemingly hurting Maryland in comparison with other states (1 year avg < 3 yrs < 5 yrs), but other factors may come to play.

Perhaps a great indicator is population density, or more specifically educated peoples density.