Last month Kathy posted on the topic of where to start your business, citing a recent Fortune Small Business and Kauffman Foundation report titled "Best Places to Launch." While Kathy (and Fortune and Kauffman) certainly has a point -- that some areas of the country may be better than others to start and grow a business -- I think there's more to it than that.

For many entrepreneurs, business really is where their heart is. Just because a town 1,000 miles across the country from where you live offers a better business tax rate, or an easier building permit process, or a better art museum than your town, that doesn't necessarily mean that you should pull up stakes and make the move. Countless successful entrepreneurs have decided to stay right where they are and build their businesses in communities with which they are familiar, leveraging their existing networks of business and personal relationships while building new ones. For example, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak didn't consult a list of best places to set up their business when they started Apple Computer in Steve Jobs' parents' garage in Los Altos, California. By (literally) staying close to home, the two Steves got a free place to assemble their first computers, they tapped into a vibrant local community of computer hobbiests (some of whom eventually became their customers, and others who became their employees), they were able to make their first big sale to a local computer shop -- the Byte Shop in nearby Mountain View -- and they were physically close to Xerox's famous Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), which invented many of the innovations that Apple Computer designed into its groundbreaking Macintosh.

So, while I can understand why "Where to start?" is a question that many entrepreneurs ask themselves, my suggestion is that they first look close to home. They may find everything there they need to succeed -- and much, much more.