1. Low cost of living.
2. Nearby colleges and universities.
3. Community of experienced entrepreneurs.
4. Large national airport.
5. Plethora of professional service providers.
6. High concentration of consumers
I think bullet points 3 to 6 make point 1 impossible.
Being able to live and work cheaply
I find the key to be in the above, where the focus is on ability. Two cities may have very similar overall costs of living on some generally accepted scale, yet still have significantly different costs of "living" for entrepreneurs.
Perhaps point 1 should really be "low minimum cost of living." Does anyone provide CoL spread information for the bigger cities?
I always wondered why this is.. my hunch is that is way to conservative for "innovative" minds (hence why Austin rocks)
Doesn't have much of a startup scene though :-(