Setting up a new business or outpost of an existing business in a remote city or town can be a daunting proposition.

To make it less daunting, work with the Mayor’s office, Economic Development, or the Chamber of Commerce to develop a single web page to kick-start business formation.

The ideal page would be created and hosted locally, listing all the resources required to form a new business unit in one place.

On your (digital) welcome mat, provide links to all relevant forms to create a business, understand zoning requirements, find commercial real estate, etc.

List any angel investors, entrepreneurial meet ups, and how to access high-bandwidth internet.

If the city or town does not have coding resources, consider tapping into your personal network and/or reaching out to the local Code for America Brigade if there is one.

Venture for America (VFA) was founded because so many high-potential recent college grads were heading to only a handful of cities, like New York or San Francisco, but not many were seeking opportunities in places like Cleveland, New Orleans, or Pittsburgh.

There are two ways to work with VFA. As a Fellow or as an Entrepreneur in Residence.

Fellowship Program
Fellows are graduates coming out of college with a degree in Computer Science and/or Engineering. VFA connects Fellows with startup opportunities in 17 cities across the country. They live and work there, paired with more experienced entrepreneurs. They can learn alongside them and help grow companies to create jobs and revitalize those communities.

Entrepreneur in Residence
This program connects seasoned executives and leaders to the cities that need them. Veteran leaders from companies like Slack, LinkedIn, and others will live and work for one year to serve as resources, mentors and advisors to the innovation and entrepreneurship communities in VFA cities.

A de-location program pays new workers a certain amount to move to a low-cost city or town. For example, Zapier is a California company that pays a de-location bonus of $10,000 to any employee who relocates outside of the Bay Area within 3 months of their hire date. You can read more about the Zapier program on Quartz. This works for Zapier because their entire workforce works remotely.

A nanodegree in robotics through Udacity (for example) consists of 2 terms, which are 3 months each. The cost of the program is $1200 per term.

You or your company could sponsor 10 students at a cost of $24,000. These could either be talented students coming out of high school -or- workers from legacy industries seeking new skills.

To keep all the incentives in the right direction, structure the tuition payout as a loan to be forgiven only upon satisfactory completion of all degree requirements.

If your home city or town lacks a well-equipped Makerspace, consider creating one. In our book Maker City: A practical guide to reinventing our cities we describe how makers benefit from working side-by-side with entrepreneurs. Placing your Makerspace inside a coworking space may make sense and can keep costs down.

A basic Makerspace can be built out in 750-1000 square feet and can cost as little $1,500. More elaborate Makerspaces can cost up to $1M and–as a result–are often built out in conjunction with a major research university or innovation center. See for example Think[box], a well-equipped Makerspace at Case Western Reserve University that is available at no cost to residents.

IBM has done this to good effect through a program it calls P-TECH. The idea here is that students attend 4 years of high school plus 2 more years that are more career focused, often in conjunction with a community college. Courses taken in community college can receive dual credit towards the student’s high school degree. The goal is to provide more skills training and also free up time the student can spend working on projects to build specific skills and experiences of interest to a potential employer.

Read more about IBM’s role in creating the P-TECH model, sometimes called 9-14 curriculum.

Take advantage of lower-cost labor and real estate available in your home town.

Work with local government officials to make sure the type of skilled workers you need are available.

You can read two very different case studies on how Christopher Alan (AutoParkit) and Jack Scott (Applied Systems and Technology Transfer) did this in Warren and Youngstown, Ohio.

Recently we had the opportunity to participate as part of a delegation that visited Youngstown, Ohio. The visit was arranged by a VC with interest in the region (Patrick McKenna) and Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio).

A visit like this can be an eye opener, to create greater understanding of the problems facing remote and rural areas that have been ‘carved out’ due to the decline of legacy industries.