Where a software company sits relative to its customers is a pure identity choice -- nothing in the economics forces it to be anywhere in particular. A physical-goods company doesn't get that choice: real shipping-distance economics can force a second location no matter how rooted or committed the founder is. That's not a smaller version of the same problem. It's a second, independent force pulling on physical-goods anchors that software anchors never face -- and conflating the two is a real diligence error.

Slant3D's new Louisville facility isn't about a bigger market -- it's about UPS's Worldport air hub putting 95% of the country within a half-day's flight. That single fact draws the real investment line between physical-goods and software companies: distance costs real, rising money for one and nothing at all for the other.

US semiconductor manufacturing has fallen from 37% of world supply in 1990 to about 12% today. Micron, founded in 1978 in the basement of a Boise dental office, is now the only major American memory chipmaker and just broke ground on a $15 billion fab meant to help close that gap.