I beg to differ. U-C is an excellent place. I dont think you have ever been there to say that.

Its very affordable. You want to spend millions on rent or hire your staff?

college town - perfect for those college grads to entertain themselves after work

Hire students from UIUC, Parkland, ISU, and few other campuses around.

Not great restaurants but pretty good variety of cuisines

Chicago is less than 2 hours away by car

no sitting in traffic for hours every day

only drawback is you cant jump companies every 6 months

air connectivity is limited but Bloomington next door has decent options

excellent place to have a family and raise children

Yahoo is increasing its presence in Champaign, so is Intel, Caterpillar, and a few more. I know they are not startups but there is a reason why they are growing there.

Yahoo moved their Hadoop analytics group from CA to IL at least partially due to huge turnover. Since moving they have not lost "quite" as many people. UIUC is also where the transistor was invented, and it the home of NCSA and HDF Group. In my opinion, it has definitely contributed to computer science and scientific computing everywhere.

What do you think accounted for the huge turnover and why moving from CA to IL reduced that? Less competitive job options in IL that made the opportunities look more attractive?

Perhaps the stability of the Midwest and a culture unlike Silicon Valley where folks move jobs every two to three years. There does seem to be more loyalty in IL, and the calmer pace may encourage more long-term planning?

Honestly, I spent most of my life in Chicago and only recently moved out to the Bay. I can't say in a major metro like that there is any more inherent loyalty. In many industries the only way to get ahead is to change jobs every couple years to make sure you stay at market rate for compensation.

Not to mention LLVM which Apple's entire compiler stack uses these days

I'm in Bloomington/Normal and concur. It's a great place to live.

What is "air connectivity"?

Airports. There's a small airport in Champaign. Presumably the airport in Bloomington (an hour away?) is larger, and of course the Chicago airports to the north (2.5 hours).

I fly out of Bloomington regularly. It's a decent airport, but sometimes it's easier/cheaper to take the train to Chicago.

It's also close to WashU.

Well there's a world class university there...

Not to mention DJB. Wouldn't be the worst place to be a security minded company.

EDIT: But yeah, Illinois :(

DJB is at University of Illinois-Chicago.

Some of you might be wondering: "Who is this DJB?" I was. Daniel J Bernstein. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_J._Bernstein

He's in Chicago.

Agreed that Urbana-Champaign might not be the best place to start a company but that doesn't mean students can't start ventures while on campus and then move them elsewhere after graduation. We've been seeing that a lot recently.

Additionally, there are some benefits for startups that stay in town. Rent is extremely cheap (you can get your own bedroom in an apartment for ~$300/month) and you get access to a lot of talented students coming out of the university.