Here is an interesting list announced by the Kauffman Foundation and Fortune Small Business. It lists the 50 best places in the USA to start a business. Topping the list are Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, as the no. 1 large city; Huntsville, Alabama, as the no. 1 medium city; and Billings, Montana no. 1 small city.
There are also some interesting findings and one of them is about location. It seems that now location matters even more than before. I was really intrigued by this and decided to see how the location of my business ranked along side the list which is available from http://money.cnn.com/smallbusiness/best_places_launch/2009/full_list/index.html
Now I am fairly new to the USA and have chosen to put my roots down in Southern California, which according to this list is not one the best places to start a business. So hang on, what about the tech innovation that is coming out of the Silicon Valley and Irvine?
Further investigation of the list also revealed that there is a ‘Near You’ tab. If I choose California my location ‘Ontario’ is nowhere close to one of the best places to start a business.
There is a note at the bottom that this data is from the US Census Bureau 2007 County Business Patterns. On reading that my first thoughts were that this is a data driven list and shows how many business have started up, not necessarily how many have survived or indeed succeeded. The more relevant list is under the ‘Business Climate’ tab. It shows where the Fastest small business growth has taken place. Now that’s more like it.