Philly makes top 3 in ranking of startup cities

Trailing behind Boston and the Bay Area, Philly scored the No. 3 spot on a yearly ranking of the country’s 25 top startup cities, climbing up five notches from last year’s report.

The 68-page Innovation That Matters 2017 report, released yesterday, was compiled by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation and D.C.-based incubator 1776. It tracked a “combination of new and updated economic data and an online survey of 413 startup founders and leaders” done by London-based Brunswick Insight.

Startup PHL, Comcast, Drexel University and Ben Franklin all get shoutouts in the report.

“This report is a huge vote of confidence for entrepreneurship in Philadelphia,” said Benjamin’s Desk’s Anthony Maher in a press release sent to local outlets. “We’ve worked for years as a community to demonstrate Philadelphia’s innovate spirit and to highlight how entrepreneurs are revitalizing the city and changing the world. Innovation That Matters serves as proof of the fruit of our labors, and we’re incredibly proud to have made so much progress in the last year.”

(Why is Ben’s Desk helping disseminate these results? It might just be another clue in the puzzle of 1776’s relationship with the coworking spot. A source told Technical.ly a merger was in the works, despite no major announcement being made at the 1776 Challenge Cup on Tuesday.)

One red flag was raised in Philly’s summary, though: connectivity. According to the research, Philly lags behind on this issue, coming in at No. 11 out of the 25 cities.

Earlier this year, another report from the Economy League of Greater Philadelphia said Philly beat New York in job growth for the first time in 25 years, bolstered — at least in part — by a pool of over 100,000 jobs in technology.