US Startup City Ranking

Report(s)

The original 2016 report was published as Egan, Dayton and Carranza (2017) and is available as a pdf from Rice University's Baker Institute. It also also available from www.edegan.com.

Data Set(s)

Updates to the data were done for 2017 and Q1/2 of 2018, and the list was expanded beyond the top 100 cities to include all U.S. cities that have received venture capital from 1980 to present. State rankings were likewise added. The results are available as tab delimited text files. When using this data, please reference them as follows:

• 2016 U.S. Cities: Egan, Edward J. (2018), "2016 U.S. Startup City Rankings", Available from www.edegan.com/wiki/US_Startup_City_Ranking
• 2017 U.S. Cities: Egan, Edward J. (2018), "2017 U.S. Startup City Rankings", Available from www.edegan.com/wiki/US_Startup_City_Ranking
• 2018 Q1&2 U.S. Cities: Egan, Edward J. (2018), "2018 Q1&2 U.S. Startup City Rankings", Available from www.edegan.com/wiki/US_Startup_City_Ranking
• 2016 U.S. States: Egan, Edward J. (2018), "2016 U.S. Startup State Rankings", Available from www.edegan.com/wiki/US_Startup_City_Ranking
• 2017 U.S. States: Egan, Edward J. (2018), "2017 U.S. Startup State Rankings", Available from www.edegan.com/wiki/US_Startup_City_Ranking
• 2018 Q1&2 U.S. States: Egan, Edward J. (2018), "2018 Q1&2 U.S. Startup State Rankings", Available from www.edegan.com/wiki/US_Startup_City_Ranking

2016 Top 20

The Top 20 cities for 2016 were as follows:

Methodology

These reports use data from Thomson–Reuters VentureXpert to examine growth venture capital (VC) investment in the United States for each year (or part of a year) and generate a ranking for U.S. startup cities. The overall ranking is based on equally weighting cities’ ranks for growth venture capital invested, the number of new growth venture capital deals (i.e., first growth VC investments into a startups), and the number of active growth VC-backed startups.

The difference between growth and transactional VC is described in Egan and Carranza (2018). Essentiually, growth VC is seed, early or later stage investments in predominantly high-growth high-tech startups.

We follow the academic convention and define a firm as an active recipient of venture capital if not more than 5 years have elapsed since the last round of investment and the firm has not experienced an IPO or an acquisition. This definition overstates reality -- perhaps as many as half of all "active" firms will be either dead or living-dead in a given municipality.

Users with internal access can see the project page Ranking US Cities by Venture Capital.

Outside References

Egan, Edward J. and Diana Carranza. 2018. "Growth vs. Transactional Venture Capital in Houston, Texas." Issue brief no. 03.05.18. Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, Houston, Texas. https://www.bakerinstitute.org/media/files/files/52cdbe0c/bi-brief-030518-mcnair-growthtransvc.pdf

Egan, Edward J., Anne Dayton, and Diana Carranza. 2017. "The Top 100 U.S. Startup Cities in 2016". Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, Houston, Texas. https://www.bakerinstitute.org/media/files/files/38132e23/mcnair-pub-rankinguscities-122117.pdf