There’s never been a better time to launch a startup in Wilmington — that’s what the latest report from DataFox says, anyway.
DataFox, a California-based number-crunching company that analyzes finance and business data, announced Wilmington is the fifth-best city in America to found a startup in. (The list excludes New York and Silicon Valley, it should be noted.) First on the list was Cambridge, Mass.
So how did Wilmington get on the map?
DataFox cited the city’s “favorable tax climate combined with access to decision-makers,” in addition to new incubators and coworking spaces, a low cost of living, UD’s Horn Program in Entrepreneurship and proximity to the Northeast Corridor. It also noted availability of mentors and policymakers.
DataFox writes:
Wilmington makes our list due to its high early-stage startup density and the strong growth of those companies. With a close-knit, successful community, Wilmington’s startup presence is growing right along with the entrepreneurs who call it home.
DataFox analyzed numbers from 12,000 pre-Series A companies in the United States for the list and only considered cities that had a least 35 such startups.
The number-crunchers looked at availability of capital to startups by comparing the average amount those startups raised. The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis’ real purchasing power metric also came into play in determining a city’s cost of living as well as DataFox’s “Growth Score,” which predicts future revenue growth.
Startup density was also a factor in the list-making process, which DataFox determined by dividing the number of pre-Series A startups in a city by the U.S. Census 2014 population estimate.
