Revised Triangle Startup Metrics
I didn’t think I would be revisiting this topic this quickly - but I found an error in some of my calculations (Thanks to Jay Bigelow from CED for pointing it out!) and came up with another interesting metric to provide (that might provide some good local competition).
When calculating my metro based calculations I included the Raleigh metro but I didn’t add in the Durham/Chapel Hill metro which is listed separately (even though we are a combined statistical area).
So unfortunately that lowers our overall number from 40.09 startups per 100k people down to 28.87 startups per 100k for the triangle area.
So let’s compare that like I did in the first post. Here are some larger metros:
Well let’s look at some of the largest metro areas:
New York - 8212 companies - 41.16
Los Angelos - 4763 - 36.27
Chicago - 1955 - 20.49
Dallas - 730 - 10.71
Houston - 574 - 9.09
Philadelphia - 771 - 12.77
DC - 1418 - 23.83
Atlanta - 1013 - 18.34
Boston - 3189 - 68.07
San Francisco - 9353 - 207.09
Phoenix - 536 - 12.18
Seattle - 1411 - 39.08
So this puts us noticeably below the larger metros like NYC, LA, Seattle. We still crush guys like Chicago, Atlanta, and others. This actually feels more right to me than the higher number did.
Let’s look at some of the more comparable metros as well:
Nashville - 293 - 16.67
Raleigh/Durham - 487 - 28.87
Boulder - 370 - 119.33
Charlotte - 259 - 11.09
Salt Lake City - 405 - 35.51
Austin - 1404 - 74.55
So previously I was excited to see us beating out Salt Lake City - but this now puts us decently below them. It makes what we need to grow even more as well - if we want to compete with Austin we need to grow more like 300% than 200%.
It’s disappointing to have to revise these numbers down - but it’s important to have accurate numbers so we can measure progress accurately.
But this also got me thinking - how does Raleigh compare to Durham/Chapel Hill? Since we have these broken up now we can look at them separately.
Durham/Chapel Hill - 233 - 43.58
Raleigh - 272 - 22.39
This is about what I expected. Although Raleigh has more startups listed than Durham, Raleigh has 1.2MM people compared to 500k people for Durham. If you look back above you can see that Durham/Chapel Hill beats out NYC, Seattle, LA and many others. Raleigh is down in the Chicago, Atlanta area.
I think what is important is actually looking at the total number, we are lumped together as a region to outsides, but it’s fun to see see it broken down as well so we can see where we are next year and who is growing faster.
-James