Two studies released last week indicate that at least a handful of smaller cities in the US, including the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina, Salt Lake City, Jacksonville, Florida and Nashville are emerging as places that investors and entrepreneurs are increasingly making bets.
Richard Florida, the director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto and a professor of global research at New York University, writes in “The Rise of Global Startup Cities,” that while venture capital has “gone global” by spreading to places like China and India, the dominant centers remain US cities that combine density, great universities, and an open-minded culture to attract the best talent. In sheer numbers, the San Francisco Bay region and the northeast US continue to account for the most dollars.
