All around the country, Americans are dreaming big. Their boldest ideas are changing their communities–and having a ripple effect throughout the world.

It’s a Thursday night in Hoboken, New Jersey, and 100 people are attacking a stack of pizza boxes. Thirty-plus vertical feet of glass lets in the view of the nearby Hudson River and Manhattan skyscrapers, while tech dorks and entrepreneurial hustlers network furiously. Pizza in one hand, business cards in the other.

The crowd is visibly distinct from that of a typical tech meetup across the river. Instead of scrawny, tattooed hipsters, Hoboken’s ranks boast a high percentage of men in dress shirts, often bulging slightly at the middle.

Abruptly, as if a drill sergeant has called in orders, the throng marches into an auditorium–a routine that’s clearly familiar–where, after a few startup demonstrations, Jeff Hoffman, founder and former CEO of Priceline.com, addresses the group.

“A good idea is a good idea, and it doesn’t care where it came from,” Hoffman preaches from the pulpit at the Stevens Institute of Technology. “Entrepreneurship can pop up any time, anywhere.”

The dress shirts applaud furiously. This is why they’ve come each month for two years to the Hoboken Tech Meetup (recently rebranded to New Jersey Tech Meetup). Just because it resides in the shadow of the vibrant New York tech community doesn’t mean Jersey can’t have an innovation scene of its own.

In the startup revolution currently sweeping the U.S., the same formula appears again and again: A handful of inventors in a region gets together to battle entrepreneurial loneliness and talk shop. Regular meetups start forming, and eventually someone opens a coworking space. Then an incubator pops up. Suddenly, programmers emerge from basements with ideas and have a place to go for feedback. Kids working corporate jobs see a community ready to support harebrained ideas. So they quit jobs and form startups. Someone’s company gets acquired by Google or Salesforce or Amazon, and the community’s entrepreneurial itch triples.