As Rackspace’s Futurist I’m known as one of Silicon Valley’s top tech influencers. I didn’t say that, Ivy did.

So, when I say Silicon Valley is being beaten, and is at risk of losing more companies to small towns, here’s why. In the past week I’ve visited three of those towns, Urbana, and Champaign Illinois and Blacksburg, Virginia.

You might not know, but YouTube, Tesla, PayPal, Mozilla started in Urbana/Champaign at University of Illinois there, and Blacksburg is home to many of the leading thinkers of autonomous vehicles, and others, thanks to being the home of Virginia Tech.

Yes, Silicon Valley has traditionally come to places like this and convinced innovators and companies to come to San Francisco area to build their technologies. Heck, just this week Apple grabbed a computer science professor out of Blacksburg to work on its AR/VR efforts.

I’m seeing signs that the flow of talent from small town America to Silicon Valley is reversing, though, and wanted to understand it.

One huge reason? Housing costs. Everyone loved taunting me with their homes with big yards that cost a few hundred thousand compared to more than a million back home.

But it goes further than just housing costs. After all, that gap has always been there as far as I can remember.

No, now they are winning people and company because way of life is much more friendly to families and, small town leaders have worked to fill in a “livability gap.” Things like having nice bars, music events, and restaurants for entrepreneurs to hang out in after a long day working. Things like high speed internet. In Virginia they have gigabit wifi in some areas.

Here, let’s take a look at some of the companies and innovators I visited who are doing amazing work.

Other influences:

If you watch even a few of these videos you’ll see just how high quality these companies and innovators are and why I believe these small communities are primed to see rapid growth over the next decade as both new kinds of startups and bigger companies decide to move more people to these kinds of communities due to the very high costs in Silicon Valley.

I came away so impressed by what I saw over last week. Hope you are too.