20Fathoms is one of nine small-town tech centers across the nation chosen for the Rural Innovation Initiative, a project of the Center on Rural Innovation (CORI), founded by Matt Dunne, a former head of community affairs for Google, and funded with a seed grant from LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hofmann. During his time with Google, Dunne worked remotely from Vermont, and his new initiative embodies CORI’s belief that smart tech investment can not only showcase small towns with economic momentum, but help reverse the fortunes of rural America.“We’re trying to take advantage of the long-time promise of the internet that it shouldn’t matter where you live, that you should be able to succeed in the digital economy from anywhere,” says Dunne.The romantic vision of telecommuting and digital technology—log in and operate from anywhere—has ceded ground to the harsh reality that opportunity, funding, and jobs tend to concentrate in select superstar cities, draining talent and jobs from rural areas.The Rural Innovation Initiative believes the current state of concentrated wealth has created an opportunity. By building a series of outposts geared for remote workers, all located in the downtowns of rural cities, the program can create small pockets of density and collaboration, as well as a cheaper labor pool of skilled tech workers.