Some metropolitan areas are powerhouses when it comes to attracting and cultivating successful startups. Others lag due to factors such as capital shortages, talent scarcity and lackluster support systems for entrepreneurs.
In an effort to identify strengths and weaknesses of entrepreneurial hubs, Startup Genome and Crunchbase are partnering on a large-scale project to evaluate and fuel the growth of more than 50 startup ecosystems globally.
Beginning today, startups around the world are completing the Startup Ecosystem 2016 survey to assess resource gaps in their ecosystem. They will also benchmark their individual startup results with peers to identify issues.
“The number of startups is growing rapidly everywhere, but the problem is in many ecosystems the attrition rate is abnormally high,” said JF Gauthier, president of Startup Genome. “Many startups fail due to external factors out of the control of entrepreneurs such as a lack of funding, technical talent, and scaling expertise.”
This year, 20,000 startups founders from more than 100 cities are expected to participate in the report, along with more than 200 local organizations in 50 member cities. The planned publication date for the report is January 2017.
The project comes at a critical time for the economy of many cities and countries because some startup ecosystems are accelerating while others are at risk of being left behind. The crucial role of these ecosystems was bolstered by a groundbreaking study by the Kauffman Foundation showing that entrepreneurial companies are the top source of U.S. job creation, as well as more recent findings underscoring how metro areas have wide disparity in creating and sustaining startups.
The upcoming Global Startup Ecosystem ranking will cover more than twice as many cities as the 2015 report, which included information on Silicon Valley, New York City, Los Angeles, Boston, Tel Aviv, London, Chicago, Seattle, Berlin, Singapore, Paris, Sao Paulo, Moscow, Austin, Bangalore, Sydney, Toronto, Vancouver, Amsterdam and Montreal. In addition to the data collection, researchers are conducting interviews with local leaders with the help of both government and private enterprise partners.
“Supporting startups with insight into investments and trends for hundreds of thousands of companies globally is central to Crunchbase’s mission” said Crunchbase Head of Operations Matt Kaufman. “Partnering with the Startup Ecosystem Report will further the analysis of the growth and strengths of these ecosystems.”
