Yes, there's life for entrepreneurs outside New York and San Francisco -- and we've got the proof! To identify the best places in which to launch and operate a business, we partnered with Livability.com, which studies small and midsize cities. Matt Carmichael, the site's chief trend analyst, developed the ranking, crunching a wide range of data, including the number of businesses and employees between 2011 and 2015; unemployment rates; number of VC deals in the past 10 years; business tax rate; value of SBA and 7(a) loans; percentage of college-educated locals; cost of living; commute time; accessibility of high-speed broadband; projected household income and population increase from now to 2020; "leakage and surplus," which charts whether people spend their money outside a city on goods and services rather than in it; the growth of good jobs and high-income positions: and Livability's own rating of overall quality of life.
