I grew up nearby, and virtually all of my friends from high school are attending universities in the Triangle.
After looking at the criteria used to compile the list, I can say that RTP still fails to compete in multiple categories. There is still little funding available in the area for people looking to spin up a "tech" startup, especially for series A and later. The region hasn't had many exits recently (at least, that I can recall), hurting the area in the "performance" category. Additionally, this means there aren't many "startup veterans" around to mentor younger business, dinging the RTP in the "startup experience" category.
There is certainly a growing entrepreneurship scene in the area. There are plenty of healthy, bootstrapped SMBs in the area applying tech to novel problems. But these aren't the types of businesses that come up on Hacker News regularly.
After looking at the criteria used to compile the list, I can say that RTP still fails to compete in multiple categories. There is still little funding available in the area for people looking to spin up a "tech" startup, especially for series A and later. The region hasn't had many exits recently (at least, that I can recall), hurting the area in the "performance" category. Additionally, this means there aren't many "startup veterans" around to mentor younger business, dinging the RTP in the "startup experience" category.
There is certainly a growing entrepreneurship scene in the area. There are plenty of healthy, bootstrapped SMBs in the area applying tech to novel problems. But these aren't the types of businesses that come up on Hacker News regularly.