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Tuesday, October 2, 2018

St. Louis Is No. 2 on Forbes' List of ‘Top 10 Rising Cities For Startups’

Posted By Jaime Lees on Tue, Oct 2, 2018 at 10:30 AM

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Beep beep, here we come! - THOMAS HAWK / FLICKR

THOMAS HAWK / FLICKR
Beep beep, here we come!

Finally, someone has recognized our greatness. Our crime rate might be abysmal but when it comes to new ideas and making changes, St. Louis is where it’s at.

Just this week, Forbes gave St. Louis the silver medal in the startup competition. What does it mean? It means that we’re the second best city in the country for dropping your new startup. We even beat out Atlanta and Denver, with only our Midwest cousin Columbus, Ohio, besting us.

Forbes used a range of categories to reach its results including number of VC (venture capital) deals, colleges that retain post-graduation talent, entrepreneurship rates, working-age population growth and the costs of business and living.

And yes, by those metrics, we're doing very well indeed. The cost of doing business in St. Louis is eight percent lower than the national average. We’ve also had major venture capital deals go down in the past three years, as Kurt Badenhausen of Forbes writes:

The value of venture capital investments in the past three years in St. Louis is up 90% compared to the prior three years, per PitchBook. Cloud-based software firm Essence Group Holdings has conducted three raises worth a combined $241 million since 2011.

When it comes to startups, out with the old and in with the new. Forbes points out that “generational wealth created by Silicon Valley companies like Apple, Google and Facebook” has raised the cost of living in area and priced out workers. “[M]edian home prices are $1.1 million in San Francisco, and business costs are 57 percent higher than in St. Louis," it notes.

In your face, San Fran. We got it goin’ on.

Email the author at jaime.lees@riverfronttimes.com

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