Austin, Texas is known for its vibrant and unique culture. Texas’s capital city embraces all types of personalities and characters: from politicians working at the Texas Capitol to students at The University of Texas to interesting personalities you can meet on world-renowned Sixth Street. One more thing to add to Austin’s lively list of charm is its passion for entrepreneurship.
Recently, buzz about Austin, its entrepreneurial spirit and economic predictions has surfaced with the coming of this new decade.
According to a BizJournals study, Austin holds the highest score for small-business vitality. Austin ranked the highest in three important categories: population, employment and small-business growth. Bizjournals’ six-part formula included analyzing one-year growth rates for small businesses and private-sector employment and the number of small businesses per 1,000 residents among other things. Baton Rouge, La. and Raleigh, N.C. (last year’s top place for entrepreneurs) followed behind Austin in the study.
ReadWriteStart, a channel dedicated as a resourceful guide to new entrepreneurs, featured Austin as one place to be for entrepreneurship in their “Never Mind the Valley” series. ReadWriteStart cited Austin’s concentration on information technology and particularly noted the role Austin Ventures, a venture capital firm in Austin, played in assisting new technology companies. Acton Master Teacher Phil Siegel is a general partner at Austin Ventures. Emerging industries in the Austin area also include biosciences and environmental businesses, clean energy innovation and other IT-related companies. Other cities featured in the “Never Mind the Valley” series include Boston, London and much more.
Two weeks ago, Ignite Austin, an event giving speakers five minutes and 20 slides to present and share ideas, gave entrepreneurs a reason to keep their eyes on Austin as an emerging start-up city. Stacey Higginbotham of BusinessWeek attended the event and even said she “left jazzed about Austin’s future as a place for entrepreneurs.” Higginbotham said that in order to continue to cultivate Austin’s success as an entrepreneurial hub, the city’s entrepreneurs must come together as a community to collaborate with and aid each other in becoming profitable. Bijoy Goswami’s presentation, The Austin Equation, focused on creating a scene around entrepreneurship. Goswami, who runs Bootstrap Austin and the Austin Equation Web site, created a map of Austin’s entrepreneur resources and encouraged the community to come together on a monthly basis to network and teach and learn with each other.
On January 21, 2010, economist Angelos Angelou announced his prediction for Austin’s economy in the next upcoming years. Angelou said that Austin will experience “modest job growth in 2010” and then become a booming economic city once again in 2011. He predicted that the job market in the city will add more than 26,000 jobs in the next two years. Angelou also stated that one reason why Austin’s employment numbers have not decreased as much as the rest of the country’s because of the entrepreneurial spirit here. “When faced with layoffs, many young and educated workers are not going to start collecting unemployment insurance — they’re going to be starting their own consulting businesses with friends and peers,” he said.
How does this affect you as an entrepreneur? Although this, unfortunately, means that Austin may jump to the No. 1 spot for bad traffic, the advantages and opportunities by adding onto our city population outweighs the cons. More available jobs in Austin will inevitably mean that its population will continue to grow. Bringing in more people creates greater needs for different products and services, thus creating more opportunities for you to build a company to satisfy those needs. More people in the city also expands the market for your products and services. Finally, a larger population in Austin also means that you have a larger pool of potential employees.
What other cities may be a contender for the top entrepreneurial hot spot?
Photo courtesy of C. Young Photography.
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[...] Austin is named the best city for the next decade, according to Kiplinger’s Personal Finance Magazine. The capital of Texas started as a booming technology sector, but its entrepreneurial spirit soon soared. Big businesses, such as Dell, IBM and now Facebook, have found homes in Austin, but it is the cultivation of small businesses that keeps the city alive and successful. Washington D.C. followed Austin on the list at No. 2 with Seattle, Boulder and Salt Lake City rounding out the top five. Keep reading why Austin is a good place to start up your business. [...]