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May 05, 2022 | Tom Ballard

Five start-up “location; location; location” considerations outlined

If you are in the economic development profession, you are very familiar with the often spoken phrase about “location; location; location.” A Senior Contributor to Forbes wrote recently about the topic.

In the article, Bernard Schroeder wrote, “As you consider the type of company you wish to start, you really should examine the importance of several factors outside of funding that could hedge your start-up’s success. Where you locate your start-up, even in the age of remote work, might actually be more critical than you think.”

His five factors for consideration are important for ecosystem builders to keep top of mind, but they are also common sense.

  • Entrepreneurs. There is nothing like success to support success. For an ecosystem to thrive, you want to have high number of successful and aspiring entrepreneurs. They create support networks, organizations, meetups and provide advice and mentoring to future entrepreneurs.
  • Talent. As you consider your start-up and what it needs at the core, does that talent exist in your selected city or region?
  • Education. In the age of rapidly accelerating companies based on competition, your potential top talent could be coming out of the local universities. Choose an ecosystem that is graduating a diverse talent base that is critical to your company’s success. Recruit some of this talent as paid interns and recruit them to be your future employees.
  • Investors. Every entrepreneurial ecosystem needs investors. Study a potential region and look to the numbers such as capital invested, diversity of investments and overall growth trendline. Also, look to the type of investor that may be specializing in an area that your start-up is heading.
  • Costs. Not a lot of founders look at this metric but again it could be critical to your start-up’s ultimate success. If you are raising capital, you might need a burn rate or runway to attain your overall objectives.

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