Portland has been named the 10th best place in the United States to start a small business. Unfortunately for us, that Business Journal ranking is for Portland, Maine. We here in Portland, Oregon, just missed the top 10, landing at #11.
The survey and resulting list is compiled by American City Business Journals—the parent company of all of the regional Business Journals. To arrive at the ranking, the survey compared the number of small businesses in the area to metropolitan population and job growth.
Of course, you can’t read the article, unless you’re a paid subscriber. But here’s a snippet:
Portland [Ore.] had 61,244 businesses with 99 or fewer employees, or 28.7 per 1,000 residents in 2006, according to Census data used in the formulation. The 11th place showing is the best by Portland since the first list arrived in 2005. Back then, with the economy in full swing, Portland ranked 39th.
So what were the top 10?
- Raleigh
- Charlotte
- Seattle
- Austin
- Boise
- Salt Lake City
- Orlando
- Oklahoma City
- Denver
- Portland, Maine
All in all, garnering the 11th spot is good news for Portland, Oregon, especially when it comes to those outside of the Silicon Forest looking in. From a “closer to home” perspective, the metrics are likely too broad to provide much insight into the comparisons between the Web and Mobile startups here in town and their peers in other metropolitan areas.
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@Bill I highlighted it because, like it or not, people will probably use the Business Journal survey as a basis for judging what’s happening in Portland. I thought it provided some interesting context for a number of discussions that occur around here.
Rick,
Wow, awesome. We’re number … 11. Um, why highlight this? It’s not a survey of tech companies so it says nothing about the suitability (or not) of Portland as a place to start a tech company.
This reminds me of how the Flight of the Conchords describes themselves: “… New Zealand’s fourth most popular guitar-based digi-bongo a capella-rap-funk-comedy folk duo”.