While most entrepreneurs believe that the only place to successfully start a business is in a city like Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, or some other coastal hotspot, more and more of them are finding the arms of St. Louis to be most welcoming. In Kenny Kline’s article “Want to Jumpstart Your Startup? Get an Entire City Behind You” on Inc.com, he honors St. Louis as the city to boost new startup growth.

Kline writes that entrepreneurs have discovered, with grant programs, business development programs, innovation hubs and venture capital firms, St. Louis is truly dedicated to helping startups thrive. Resources like these explain why so many of them are willing to leave the coasts for the support they’ve been finding in the heartland of America.

Kline uses CEO Michael Seaman, founder of SwipeSum, a financial business software startup that began in Venice Beach, CA as an example of what St. Louis has to offer. After some encouragement from his brother who lived in St. Louis, Seaman decided to give the city a look and was immediately impressed.

He found that the government was extremely helpful in terms of tax incentives and hiring, and that the move made sense financially as well. Everything is more affordable, which keeps down labor costs.

Kline explains that since moving to St. Louis, SwipeSum has also had access to many of the region’s investors, and that the old cliché about startups having trouble with early-stage funding has not been reflective of their experience here in St. Louis.

SwipeSum has embraced its adopted city, even being dedicated to hiring locally, using the city in marketing and implementing a give-back program to “give away SwipeSum’s paid services —for free— to any St. Louis business.”

Seaman is now on a mission to encourage other companies to embrace all that St. Louis has to offer. It’s clear that his decision to move to St. Louis has helped in his early success.