Washington D.C. and Baltimore rank sixth among the best cities in the U.S. for tech startups according to CIO, which ranked the top 13 cities for tech startups. The list covered a pretty big swath of the tech economy, from Pittsburgh at 13 to the unsurprising topper of Silicon Valley. To make the list, CIO put together information on salaries, number of companies and deals and how much equity got invested in a city's tech startups to put together the list. The information came mostly from the National Venture Capital Association with salary data from Dice.
Baltimore and D.C. (lumped together for reasons that defy both geography and economic reality) just beat out Seattle but fell behind Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, New York and San Jose as well as Silicon Valley. For Baltimore and D.C., the average IT salary was just under $100,000 with almost $870 million in equity investment and, at least according to the NVCA, 81 companies and 97 deals in the last year.
These kind of numbers don't necessarily mean a lot in the context of economic growth in startups and technology, especially in the fast-growing cybersecurity market. Maryland as a whole is certainly keen to grow its tech scene and there are plenty of similar efforts in Virginia and the District. Regardless of the scale, it will be worth looking back the numbers next year to see if all of the plans under discussion bear real economic fruit for the region and push it even higher on the list.
Top Image via Shutterstock, Chart via CIO
