The call of the mountains
The call of the mountains.
Kevin Benedict worked for years at a Seattle software company, but burned out from the grueling hours, heavy traffic, and high cost of living.
‘We hardly saw our kids,’ he says. And so, in 2001, he moved to Boise, where he took a management position at semiconductor giant Micron Technology (MU, Fortune 500). Three years later Benedict launched Mobile Dataforce, a software startup that sells mobile productivity applications.
Thousands have followed Benedict”s path in recent years. Boise and other Rocky Mountain cities scored higher than the rest of the U.S. for entrepreneurial activity, according to the Kauffman Index, an annual survey conducted by the Kauffman Foundation, a nonprofit based in Kansas City, Mo., that promotes entrepreneurship. Montana boasts the highest rate of startups a month (0.6% of adults) of any state.
