So, do you want to start a high-tech company? We highly recommend moving to California. The Wall Street Journal recently published its picks as the 50 Best Venture Capital-Backed Startups in America. Thirty-seven of them are in California. Most of them are in Northern California, in or around Silicon Valley.

Even the state that runs on the power of public sector unions and is nearly bankrupt, California is at the forefront of advanced technology and turning ideas into successful businesses. Talk about “Damn torpedoes, full speed ahead,” California entrepreneurs have overcome government mismanagement and economic hurdles in a big way. And his reward has also been great. Some of the top 50 companies have already been sold and some are going public with huge returns on investors’ capital.

With 74% of the top startups hailing from California, it begs the question: Why not from the rest of the country? The vaunted second “silicon valley” in and around Austin, Texas only has one on the list. There is NONE from the Midwest, and only one from the old high-tech corridor in Boston.

So what does California have that the rest of the country doesn’t? He has an entrepreneurial mindset and a willingness to roll the dice. Silicon Valley venture capitalists have made so much money investing in and trusting some of the brightest minds (think Steve Jobs) that they are willing to gamble even higher. Mark Zuckerberg may have hatched the idea for Facebook from him at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but he moved back to Northern California to start the company from him.

California also has this little institution called Stanford University. Not only does it have a good soccer team, but it is a high-tech virtual incubator that is changing the world. Graduate software engineers and big thinkers are coming out of Stanford more than any of those other prestigious institutions, and starting companies at a furious pace.
Will any of the other lauded colleges in the rest of the country stand up and be counted? Most of us pray for job creation, but don’t understand how to make it happen. Stanford University, the venture capitalists, and the plethora of high-tech entrepreneurs spawned there understand this and are making it a reality.

Bring together other universities, venture capitalists, angel investors, and aggressive entrepreneurs, and in five years, the new Wall Street Journal top 50 may come from the rest of the country.