What Makes a City Startup Friendly?

<i>Large national airport.</i><p>I think there's something to be said for having more than one large airport, in competition with each other, in any large enough major metro area. Single-airport cities in my not-pluralizable-to-data experience have more problems with rental car shortages, weather, and traffic.<p>Perhaps it's just a question of number of airports per population and/or land area. About 1 per million people seems about right, even though the Bay Area falls shy of that.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_United_States_Metropolitan_Statistical_Areas" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_United_States_Metropol...</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_100_largest_metropolitan_areas_in_Canada" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_100_largest_metropo...</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_areas_by_population" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_areas_by_p...</a><p>Is there a convenient count of major and/or minor commercial airports for these areas?

He listed 6 factors to ponder.<p>1. Low cost of living.<p>2. Nearby colleges and universities.<p>3. Community of experienced entrepreneurs.<p>4. Large national airport.<p>5. Plethora of professional service providers.<p>6. High concentration of consumers<p>I think bullet points 3 to 6 make point 1 impossible.

The one item that really matters is:<p>Community of experienced entrepreneurs.

Why we chose the Austin Area vs. elsewhere:<p><pre><code> 1. No Crime (NYC-Yikes) 2. No Personal Income Tax (Calif, Mass &#38; NYC-Yikes!) 3. Low (all other) Taxes (Calif &#38; NYC-Yikes!) 4. Low to basically non-existent business regulations &#38; red-tape (Calf-Yikes!) 5. Reasonable Weather (Mass &#38; NYC-Yikes!) 6. Reasonable Cost of Living (NYC-Yikes!) </code></pre> Overall Austin seemed financially the best place because Texas does not tax any personal income and that is a big savings. Since both of us founders are from California on the minus side we have found Austin to be incredibly humid in the summertime and since we are still small we might give Seattle a try very soon.<p>Too bad the state government of California is not as business friendly as Texas, I’m sure a lot of companies would move back quickly.

While things like cost of living, availability of specific services etc are important the article missed one thing.<p>In the earliest stages at least, what you need most is a place to be able to think and work and create something without too much distraction.<p>I'd say a good place to start a startup would be similar to a place you'd want to live if you were working on some hard math problem or something. Somewhere you can walk the streets and think about stuff, with libraries with quiet corners and ubquitous coffee shops would be my ideal. I guess that probably describes a lot of university towns, especially the older ones.