Steve built your phone. Mark connects your friends. Larry runs your searches. Reed streams your shows. Jeff sells you everything. Jack lets you complain about it (and pay for coffee). Elon built your car and spaceship…or at least Wall St. seems to think he did. And Bill got the whole thing rolling. It’s clear that America has a bit of a type when it comes to successful entrepreneurs. They are supposed to “think different” but not be different—at least, not different from central casting’s vision of a “nerd tycoon”.
And yet, female entrepreneurs in New York City have fought to overcome sexism and underfunding to create millions of jobs. In San Francisco alone, despite all of the headwinds, LGBTQ+ entrepreneurs have brought in billions in startup funding. In fact, entrepreneurs across the United States–LGBTQ+, women, Black, Latine, Refugees, and more–have contributed enormous numbers of jobs, patents, and dollars to their cities.
StartOut Pride Economic Impact Index
These discoveries and more are revealed by the new StartOut Pride Economic Impact Index. The purpose of the Index is to understand the broader impact of economic inclusion on the lives of everyone. It is simultaneously a dataset, an algorithm, an economic model, and a website, revealing the under-appreciated impact of marginalized entrepreneurs. The Index also reports an entirely new metric: the achievement gap. For example, in a more inclusive US economy, LGBTQ+ entrepreneurs could have added an additional $125 billion, 2.4 million jobs, and 10,000 patents, but in this world it never happened.
Socos Labs collaborated with StartOut to create the Index and help innovative minds create jobs and transform their cities. The Index mashes up data generously donated by Crunchbase with data from the US Patent Office, the Census Bureau, and numerous other sources. It is a tool to illuminate the drivers of success for all entrepreneurs in your community–your own sons, daughters, and neighbors.
LGBTQ+ entrepreneurs
The infographics below include some of the Index’s most striking findings on LGBTQ+ entrepreneurship. Go explore your own city and share what you discover. For example, while the Index currently only identifies four openly LGBTQ+ entrepreneurs in Boston, its novel statistical model reveals that nearly 270,000 jobs were likely created by Boston’s queer founders. San Francisco is the unsurprising home to the largest number of female founders, but the women of Sacramento bring in 50% more funding…3x their male peers! There are even discoveries to be made about entrepreneurship in general, like the surprisingly diverse pool of cities–Phoenix, Dallas, Minneapolis, Detroit, Miami, and more–creating large numbers of high growth startups. There are many more healthy entrepreneurial economies across the country than most people appreciate.
You can find an “instruction manual” for the Index along with the story behind its creation at Socos Labs. There are so many insights that you can uncover about your city and your community. If you make an exciting discovery or find something that surprises you, share it with the world.
Dr. Vivienne Ming, founder of Socos Labs.
