#TechnologyStartups & #Entrepreneurs

The bulk of venture capital continues to go to a few select destinations, with Silicon Valley startups traditionally scooping up 40% of all funding. What about those who don’t want to head here, find it too expensive, believe a real shift may be in play already or who just hate earthquakes?
According to USA Today, and the latest rankings from the National Venture Capital Association, the top ten cities for startups in terms of dollars received by young tech companies were:

San Francisco

Boston

New York

Los Angeles

Washington D.C.

San Diego

Chicago

Austin

Denver

Seattle

However, these clearly aren’t the cheapest destinations in the country, especially for brand new startups and bootstrapping entrepreneurs. In fact, the recent spread of tech startup hot spots is increasingly flowing to areas which not only provide a good talent base but which also offer more affordable real estate. Some other emerging cities to watch include Salt Lake City, Grand Rapids and Miami, especially once widening of the Panama Canal is finished in 2014.
With the rise of crowd funding, more cloud computing solutions, and the flexibility of the latest business phone systems, entrepreneurs may be less reliant on having to move to where the money is and can keep overhead down and plow more into their business ideas themselves rather than blowing it on rent. However, those eager to raise millions in early rounds for seed money and to expand may ultimately have to go where investors are more comfortable.
However, there can be other factors, which make it sensible to move, especially for surrounding yourself with other entrepreneurs, positive attitudes and the structure and inspiration being in an incubator setup can provide.