I have several friends who have stayed there after graduating from NDSU to work as developers and engineers. If you make $50K/year you can easily live high on the hog. It also continues to keep a "small town" feel even though its grown a ton over the past ten years.
I would say SD would be friendlier. They actively advertise in the Minneapolis area boasting of their business friendly government. They'd completely go for something like this, but then, nobody'd want to live anywhere in SD. Ever.
For myself? Not a chance in hell. Sorry, I lived in Grand Forks for several years, and between the wind, extreme temperature differences, and flooding, you'd not be able to get me to live there. Sure, you could eventually offer enough money, but it wouldn't fit in this plan.
a) There might already be something like that. A local guy sold Great Plains to MS years ago for over a billion dollars, and has done a lot to renovate the downtown area and has a local venture fund.
This discussion is shaping up in the other thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5578195 . Also, I've been discussing it with other people for the past 48 hours. Austin is getting a lot of recommendation. I feel like #4-10 tech hubs are probably better targets than nonentities, but we'll see.
As I think about it, I don't want the governments footing the bill. I'd prefer to have at least 50% private investment (1:! matching?) as long as it's willing to stay passive enough not to interfere with engineer autonomy. Furthermore, over the long term, I'd want the ability of engineers to buy into the fund.
I have several friends who have stayed there after graduating from NDSU to work as developers and engineers. If you make $50K/year you can easily live high on the hog. It also continues to keep a "small town" feel even though its grown a ton over the past ten years.