[mud_dauber]

You’ve got to have a local core of people to bounce ideas off each other.

I moved from Austin to Appalachia to care for parents. The lack of any entrepreneurial spark here is just jarring. People just keep their heads down. They want better - but there’s zero intellectual infrastructure.

[jwells89]

My experience having grown up in the WV portion of Appalachia is that there used to be a number of highly localized small businesses, but ability to scale was highly restricted.

Back in the 90s my father ran a little greenhouse that he sold plants out of for example which brought in a little bit of extra income for the family, but wasn’t able to scale it up due to lack of access to the capital required to do so, and money didn’t exactly grow on trees out there even 30 years ago (when financially things were much better there than they are now). Even if he had been able to scale, I’m not sure how long it could’ve lasted. Bigger greenhouses in the area ended up being run out of business when Walmart came in and started selling plants for prices that no small business could compete with.

These days that part of the state is a ghost of what it was back then. So many businesses have closed down or moved out, small/startup or otherwise.

[delfinom]

Walmart has done much of the work destroying local American businesses, especially since everything they sell is basically imported from overseas.

People decry the "globalism" boogeyman but then immediately go shop at Walmart.

[octopoc]

I think that's partly a generational thing. The younger generations tend to be willing to spend more to ensure a "clean" supply chain--where clean means things like no slavery, family owned business, etc. The older generation tends to do what you're talking about. This is true in my family, but I've also read studies somewhere that illustrate that this is a pretty strong correlation between generations.

[ebiester]

I think many older people are more skeptical of the companies declaring their “clean” silly chain.

[vundercind]

Appalachia’s a big place I guess, but the thing I found most remarkable in the North Carolina portion of it was that damn near every rural-road mountain driveway seemed to have a sign marking that the house was also home to a small business.

[coffeebeqn]

Probably also out of necessity. There aren’t many employers in the mountains

[rm_-rf_slash]

People in rural places have supplemented their incomes selling things from flowers to honey to moonshine for ages.

[itsoktocry]

>The lack of any entrepreneurial spark here is just jarring. People just keep their heads down

If you're not taking ice baths, drinking Soylent and working on the weekend then you aren't crushing it, right?

There's value to an entrepreneurial circle around you, but Silicon Valley mentality is relentlessly parodied for a reason.