The Washington, D.C. metropolitan area is the hottest spot in the country for entrepreneurship according to a new report from the Kauffman Index of Growth Entrepreneurship. The ranking is based on a combination of how many new startups there are, how startups in the area have scaled in the course of a decade and how many companies show rapid growth. All told, D.C. easily beats out Austin, Columbus, San Jose and Nashville, the next ranked cities, and far ahead of Boston, New York or other hubs of innovation.
D.C. didn't win in every category. It was only seventh in IPO density, unsurprisingly beat out by the Silicon Valley hubs of San Jose and San Francisco along with cities like Boston and San Diego. But, even as overall venture capital funding has fallen, D.C. has managed a strong start to 2016, mitigating many other factors.
This is actually the second year in a row that the D.C. area has been top ranked in entrepreneurship, but the overall growth of entrepreneurship in the U.S. is notable, with only four cities earning a lower score than last year, and some cities dropping in rank despite higher scores only because others jumped ahead. And while D.C. was the center of entrepreneurship in terms of city rankings, Virginia and Maryland were numbers one and two respectively when it came to comparisons by state, no doubt aided by the gravitational pull of the D.C. metro area, along with some impressive numbers out of Baltimore. Check out more of the numbers at the report page and check out the map below.
