According to a recent study report brought out by Kauffman Foundation suggests that startup activity bounced upward in 32 of the 50 U.S. states last year, and 18 of the nation’s top 40 metropolitan areas also saw increase in new venture activity.
“State and local leaders need to understand how many startups they have in their regions and who’s starting them so they can make decisions on how to build on what they currently have.”, said Dane Stangler, vice president of Research and Policy at the Kauffman Foundation.
The key points of the research report;
- All the US cities that ranked in the top 10 with the most startup activity in the 2014 Index remained in the top 10 in the 2015 Index.
- Austin, Texas, came out on top in the rate of new entrepreneurs, followed by Miami and San Jose, California.
- San Jose ranked highest in opportunity share, which measures the percentage of new entrepreneurs not coming out of unemployment. On the other end of the spectrum was Nashville, with the lowest percent opportunity share.
- For startup density, which tracks new businesses rather than entrepreneurs, the measure stretched from the lower end – the Cincinnati, Ohio, metro area – to the high end – 247.6 startups per 100,000 people in metropolitan Miami.
- Startup activity was higher for thirty-two of the fifty U.S. states in the 2015 Index when compared to the 2014 Index.
- The five states with the highest startup activity in the 2015 Index were Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, Colorado, and Vermont. The high level of startup activity in these states is likely associated with the very high real GDP growth, most of these states have recently experienced.
The Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurship is the first and largest index tracking entrepreneurship across city, state and national levels for the United States, and also presents demographic characteristics of the business owners.
