What We Learned Driving 2,000 Miles Through the South's Startup Landscape

I grew up there, and used to work for a startup there. In many ways I didn't like Durham so much -- way too suburban and sprawling for me, most of my friends lived in cookie-cutter apartments, the sense of local character was kind of faint. But it definitely does have a lot of things going for it, in particular a critical mass of talented, energetic people.

It's the kind of place where if you want to try out X, you will find a surprisingly large and dedicated group of people doing X -- for just about any value of X.

And, to add to that, I've noticed that the center city has been rejuvenated a lot since 2004 when I left.

Also, most of the area businesses are bootstrapped.