North Carolina is home to a bustling epicenter for tech startups, brainy talent, and killer barbecue.

A hyper-educated workforce means the Research Triangle, the North Carolina region comprising Chapel Hill, Durham, and Raleigh--Inc.'s No. 3 Surge City--has a booming and brainy startup scene. Once known for tobacco and textiles, the area has reinvented itself as a hub equally well-versed in tech and food.

Startup Neighborhoods

Most residents never thought they'd see the day, but downtown Durham is now a cultural and entrepreneurial hotbed. American Tobacco Campus, once a crime-ridden stretch of abandoned cigarette factories, is now a sprawling expanse of outdoor cafés, green space, and startup offices. Sports-scheduling app maker Teamworks is around the corner from the massive American Underground co-working space, which houses more than 80 companies, including fintech startup LoanWell.

Raleigh's Warehouse District, another recently revitalized precinct, is home to Videri Chocolate Factory, as well as HQ Raleigh's 20,000-square-foot flagship co-working space. Lunchgoers hit the original Happy + Hale for ahi poke bowls and cold-pressed juices.

$96,173

Average salary of a software engineer here --17 percent below the national average.

Source: Glassdoor

$1.1 billion

Funding raised by North Carolina startups in 2017, up 36 percent from the previous year.

Source: Council for Entrepreneurial Development

$25.23

The average annual asking office rent per square foot.

Source: JLL's Q2 2018 Office Insight report on the Raleigh-Durham market

47 percent

Portion of the local talent pool with a bachelor's or higher degree.

Source: JLL's Q2 2018 Office Insight report on the Raleigh-Durham market

The Downtown Chapel Hill area, located at the northwest corner of the UNC campus, is home to a Google outpost and a handful of co-working spaces.

Talent Pipeline

The home to Duke, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and NC State offers a hyper-educated workforce (ahead of San Francisco, according to NerdWallet). All three schools have well-regarded entrepreneurship programs, as well as angel funds through which alumni can invest in current students' ventures. The area's startups are software-heavy, thanks in part to the schools' strong engineering and computer science studies, but there are plenty of exceptions, like beekeeping startup Bee Downtown, which Leigh- Kathryn Bonner founded while at NC State.

UNC-backed Launch Chapel Hill offers a 22-week accelerator program that accepts eight to 12 startups. Graduates include Seal the Seasons, which freezes and distributes farmers' crops.

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Source: Inc.com