Boise Set Out to Become the Next Austin or Seattle. Instead, It’s On Track to Become the Next Silicon Valley

After graduating from Y Combinator’s summer program in San Francisco, the three co-founders of Lumineye made a choice that many of their peers would not: They left town. The trio moved back to Boise, Idaho, where they had started the business, which builds portable wall-penetrating radar to help first responders locate people. “Staying in the Bay Area,” says Megan Lacy, one of the founders, “didn’t seem as necessary as it might have 10 years ago.”

“Five years ago, Boise was struggling,” says Crabbs. Local leaders were bemoaning the fact that other small cities were gaining reputations as entrepreneurial havens. So in 2014, he and about 20 key area players met to determine what Boise should do to become the next Austin, Seattle, or Portland for business owners. They settled on two major goals: broadening the talent pipeline and increasing access to capital–and local institutions began to borrow tactics from those in other cities.