In a new ranking of the best Midwest cities for startups, Chicago once again took the top spot, while many of the region's college towns--along with cities in downstate Illinois--saw their rankings slip.
In a new report published this week from Chicago VC firm M25, Chicago was--not surprisingly--ranked the top tech ecosystem in the Midwest. The Windy City has stayed atop M25's rankings each of the four years the firm has published its annual report.
In fact, the top six cities in this year's rankings remain unchanged from the year prior. Following Chicago on M25's list are Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, St. Louis and Ann Arbor. Rounding out the top 10 are No. 7 Columbus (up from No. 9 last year), No. 8 Madison (down from No. 7), No. 9 Detroit (up from No. 11) and No. 10 Cincinnati (down from No. 7).
Broadly speaking, M25 evaluates cities based on three things: startup activity, access to resources and business climate. It measured 27 different variables from 18 data sources, including Pitchbook venture data, tech talent data from HumanPredictions, and U.S. census data.
While cities like Chicago, Minneapolis and Pittsburgh held steady in their rankings, some of the Midwest's college towns didn't fair quite as well. Madison, Lafayette, Champaign and Bloomington, IN all dropped a spot from their 2019 rankings, while Ames, IA fell three spots, Iowa City dropped three spots, and Lincoln, NE fell five spots.
But the report notes that college towns still largely outperform cities of similar sizes that don't have a local university.
"Many of these were hurt by the reduced emphasis on life science outcomes in this years rankings, and overall they still perform much better than non-university-dominated cities of similar size," the report said.
Illinois cities not named Chicago also fell in M25's 2020 startup rankings. Along with the aforementioned Champaign, No. 44 Bloomington, IL dropped seven spots, No. 47 Peoria fell 11 spots, No. 51 Rockford dropped two spots, and No. 53 Springfield dropped three spots.
"Some are a symptom of college towns declining broadly, others likely (fell) because hyper-dominant Chicago keeps sucking up talent, capital and resources, but clearly something needs to change," the report said.
Other cities that saw their rankings drop include Milwaukee (down one to No. 13), Cleveland (down two to No. 11), and Lansing, MI (down one to No. 25). Some of the biggest risers were Des Moines, IA (up six to No. 18) and Grand Rapids, MI (up three to No. 23).
You can see the full 2020 rankings here.
