08/31/2026
Ok, Here’s the thing about Galesburg, Illinois that makes no sense, and please speak up if it's way out in left field...
Here we talk about innovation like it belongs somewhere else. Not in Illinois. Taxes just too high. Roads. No Jobs. Nothing to do. 🗿
John Deere can build world-class technology in Moline. Its world headquarters is there, along with engineering and technology operations across Illinois.
Caterpillar spent generations building and engineering machines around Peoria.
State Farm built one of the largest insurance companies in America from Bloomington, where it still has thousands of employees.
Rivian is building electric vehicles in Normal, Illinois, including the R2 today.
But somehow when you get to a place like Galesburg, Illinois; we start acting like people who are ambitious are just supposed to wait for somebody from one of those places to bring us an opportunity.. Like really.. We don't want to be taking our kids to the quad cities to get school clothes in 2044...
Side tracked.
But why is this...? Why are there new car brands popping up in Illinois... but Galesburg has no potential?
A business owner in Rockford, Moline, Galesburg, Springfield or Carbondale can open the same laptop. Use the same internet. Take the same Zoom call.
They can sell through the same Shopify. Square. and accept the same Stripe payment. Wise. Paypal. Using the same QuickBooks. Xero and experimenting heavily with the same AI tools. Cline, OpenHands, Aider, OpenCode, Goose, Continue, TabbyML, Qodo, SWE-agent, Plandex. (extremely niche AI tools..)
don't feel left out.
Then they turn around and sell to the same customer in California. That customer is actually moving out of California into Idaho🗿but that's besides the point..
Geography still matters. But in different ways.. and not nearly as much as it used to.
The funny thing is, there is actually science behind another part of this whole we have access to the same things now concept..
Economists call it knowledge spillover: useful ideas and know-how move between people and businesses when they interact. Research on coworking found that startups located near one another were more likely to pick up technologies from their neighbors, and the effect was strongly connected to social interaction. Which ironically we're missing but is so powerful. Interestingly enough, some of the strongest benefits happened when the businesses were different from each other.
That’s basically the entire incUspace thesis.
The insurance guy shouldn’t only know insurance people. The software guy shouldn’t only know software people. The CNC programmer, insurance broker, civil engineer, commercial photographer, software developer, HVAC contractor, fractional CFO, grant writer, architect, e-commerce seller, land surveyor, logistics consultant, videographer, machine-shop owner, cybersecurity guy, real-estate investor, product designer, independent adjuster, automation nerd, and the person building some weird little company nobody understands yet should occasionally end up in the same damn room.
And gosh, if you made it this far really do let us know what you think about this post..
Because Galesburg, IL does not need to become Chicago.
It doesn’t need to become Bloomington. nor Moline or Bloomington-Normal. Galesburg needs to get better at connecting the capable people who are already here.
Actually- 🗿These small towns across the need to lock in..
Illinois has been building enormous things outside Chicago for more than a century.
Maybe the next chapter isn’t one giant company riding into town. it's likely hundreds of smaller businesses getting smarter, meeting each other, using better tools and selling far beyond the city limits. That puts Galesburg, IL in exactly the same conversation.
This is not because we’re "pretending" to be a big city. but became times have caught up.. and we finally, don’t have to be one.
