Three of Tennessee’s four metros drop in StartupBlink’s latest rankings of entrepreneurial ecosystems
StartupBlink has issued its annual global rankings of the entrepreneurial ecosystems in 1,000 cities across 100 countries, and it should come as no surprise that U.S. communities continue to dominate. In fact, nine of the top 25 are U.S. cities.
Leading the pack by a more than 2X factor over its next competitor is San Francisco. Placing #2 is New York City followed by Los Angeles (#4), Boston (#5), Seattle (#11), Chicago (#14), Washington, DC (#19), Austin (#20), and San Diego (#21). The highest ranked city in the Southeast was Atlanta at #28 with Raleigh-Durham clocking in at #41. Nashville ranked #74.
If you spend time analyzing the report through the online map, you can find specific data on Tennessee cities.
- Chattanooga – Ranked #69 nationally, down five spots from 2021; #81 in North America, down seven spots; and #235 globally, a decline of 13 spots from 2021. The report describes Chattanooga as “an ideal place to locate social and leisure, eCommerce and retail, and software and data start-ups.”
- Knoxville – Ranked #117 in the U.S., #133 in North America, and #383 globally. Those reflect drops of 35, 39 and 82 spots respectively from the 2021 report. About the Knoxville ecosystem, the authors say the city “is an ideal place to locate for energy and environment, health, and eCommerce and retail start-ups.”
- Nashville – With its rankings of #27 in the U.S. and #30 in North America, Music City’s lost just two spots. Its #74 ranking globally reflects a decline of 11 spots from 2021. StartupBlink describes Nashville as “an ideal place to locate health, social and leisure and marketing and sales start-ups.”
- Memphis – Our West Tennessee city was the only one of Tennessee’s major metros to show an increase compared to the 2021 report. It rose one spot to #78 in the U.S., held its ranking of #91 in North America, and moved up 14 spots to #263 globally. The authors described Memphis as “an ideal place to locate health, eCommerce and retail and social and leisure start-ups.”
- Clarksville – The city made the rankings for the first time, being listed #238 nationally, #271 in North America, and #890 globally.
- Cookeville was included in the Nashville data, and neither Jackson nor Kingsport-Johnson City-Bristol were listed.
According to the report, “There are multiple sources of data used to build the index. Firstly, the global map is crowdsourced with hundreds of thousands of start-up related entities. StartupBlink also works closely with numerous global data partners, such as Crunchbase, SEMrush, Statista, and Meetup to supplement data from these unique sources. In addition, we work with approximately 100 Ecosystem partners, most of which are government agencies, and receive data about their ecosystems. Finally, substantial data is received from the deployment of white-labeled global Startup Industry Maps, using StartupBlink technology, such as The Global Fintech Map and the COVID-19 Resilience Innovation Map. There are also dozens of specific location ecosystem portals helping us to collect additional data.”
The report can be accessed here.
