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“I don’t even know how to use my own damn email,” says the Mayor of a city I visited on the tech tour this year.

It would be easy to publicly shame him for admitting that he still hasn’t quite figured out something that most of us take for granted but, in his defense, he also asked me to bring a few investors to town for a week and allowed me to park my Airstream right in the middle of his downtown business district. He means well and he’s trying to make things right for his people.

His city, like many cities around the US & Canada, is faced with an impending problem: one of the biggest factories in town is planning to downsize and nearly 1,000 local jobs will be eliminated within the next year. He and his team now recognize that bringing another factory to town — particularly one that can re-employ those 1,000 people — is near impossible.

He needs to find ways to provide training for these people and the tech community hasn’t made that easy.

On one extreme, local colleges and universities have created certificates, associate’s degrees and bachelor’s degrees, but these cost money and not everyone has the months or years required.

On the other extreme, we’ve created code bootcamps for adults that want to enter the software development industry, but those cost money and not everyone needs to code.

Middle America need something else.

Middle America needs a basic on-ramp into the technology world for adults coming out of decades-long careers in other industries.

Two suggestions:

• If you’re an entrepreneur in this space, you could build a huge business on technology skills training across Middle America. Go do it.
• If you’re a city leader, consider incentivizing your adult constituents to seek out and obtain technology skills.
• If you’re attending any tech events in your city — no matter how big, small or sophisticated — take one non-tech friend with you to every event. Collisions matter.

The tech tour, sometimes, feels like Groundhog Day.

In every city, a local accelerator / incubator director talks about their “great” companies. The local entrepreneurs all complain about the lack of capital. Everyone else just wants to figure out what startups actually do.

To be honest, it’s hard not to become a little cynical after a while.

If I had a magic wand (and unlimited cash), I’d force at least one entrepreneur, one investor and one community leader to come with me to at least one other city on the tech tour.

Only then would they realize that it really is the same everywhere else. It’s just as hard, just as noisy and just as frustrating for everyone else.

I’ve learned something else along the tour this year: it’s so easy for everyone to claim that it’s easier elsewhere. Mostly because it absolves the individual for taking ownership of their own problems.

If you’re trying to build a company, 99% of what you need to know is available via Google and the last 1% is available via email. Bonus points if you get on a plane (or come with us).

If you’re trying to build a community, 99% of the challenges you’re facing have been handled by your peer in another city. Email them. Better yet, get on a plane (or come with us).

If you’re just trying to figure out what a tech community looks like, it’s never been easier to visit coworking offices in other cities. Again, get on a plane (or come with us).

If I could figure out some way to systematically connect entrepreneurs and community builders with their peers across North America, I’m fully convinced that they would all have no other choice than to raise the bar for themselves.

There, I said it.

I’m worried all the time. I know the venture industry’s changing. I know startups keep changing. I know that we can’t all just sit in DC, San Francisco or NYC anymore. On top of that all, I know there’s someone else out there that’s just a little bit hungrier than me. So I focus on doing the things that no one else is doing… yet… (e.g., hauling an Airstream around North America) to try to stay one step ahead of the curve.

In many ways, the most successful founders I’ve met tend to share a similar mindset: they’re more self-aware and more relentlessly resourceful. They use those two traits to speed up their execution personally and professionally.

A sense of urgency is the most important thing we can bring to any entrepreneur. The challenge, however, is that each entrepreneur needs slightly different inputs to drive that urgency. For me, it’s that constant fear. For others, it’s a chip on their shoulder. Everyone’s different, you get it.

Every city I’ve visited seems to have resources for people that might want to start something. Sometimes they also have resources for people that have already started something. What’s lacking are resources for importing urgency to a city’s entrepreneurs.

I’ve said before that I’m not sure that entrepreneurship can be taught but I do know that it can be learned. I think the same thing goes for that sense of urgency. If we could get more entrepreneurs — regardless of whether they want to build a local business or a venture-scaled business — to meet and know their peers, I’m convinced it would only speed up their path to success.

If I’ve learned anything as an investor over the past few years, it’s that the companies that end up creating the most jobs (and returning the most money) almost always look like products at the beginning.

If I find myself in a meeting where the founder is talking about the product for more than 50% of the allotted time, something’s wrong.

It could be that the founder is overly focused on the product instead of the growth of the product. It could be that I don’t understand enough about the market itself (in which case, I shouldn’t be investing in it anyway). Or it could be something else entirely.

This is exactly why traction matters and why founders should lead with it: traction is the only leading indicator that a product might eventually turn into a company.

The key idea here is to recognize that judging ideas isn’t worth anyone’s time. Especially when we’re talking about companies that can acquire their customers online and/or service their customers online.

Trailing indicators are a terrible way to measure the future potential of a city’s tech scene. Aggregating the numbers make these trailing indicators even worse (e.g., aggregate capital raised, aggregate revenue, aggregate number of employees).

If you want to make your city better, start something. If you want to help make your city better, invest in programs and events that help more people start something. This is why, at the local level, we ought to be talking more about entrepreneurship than innovation.

With roughly 470 first-time venture firms trying to raise a fund, the overall micro-VC trend doesn’t appear to be slowing. Simultaneously, the global interest in startups continues to grow. Bringing it all together is the growing sentiment that Silicon Valley isn’t the only place to start and grow tech companies anymore.

The point is that all the signs are pointing towards the economic growth of smaller cities and, given what I’ve seen on the tech tour this year, the best way to predict which cities are poised to become local tech hubs is to track the number of new businesses (read: startups) created over time.

The best way to gauge the potential of a city’s future tech scene is to track the number of business license filings. This is probably the best leading indicator of a city’s “openness” to entrepreneurship over the long term.

Moneyball for cities is all about creating more startups and then doubling-down on those companies by creating more resources for the companies that show actual traction. Ultimately, creating ten new $1M/year companies or one new $10M would drastically transform local economies and the only predictable way to ensure that happens is to get more entrepreneurs to step up to the plate.