Best, Worst Small Cities In Boulder County For Business Startups

BOULDER COUNTY, CO — Startups are always a risk, and choosing the city with the right fit can be the difference between success and failure. Big cities may seem like an obvious choice, but small cities have their own advantages. So, the personal finance website WalletHub used data-driven research to compile a list of the best, and worst, small cities in the United States to start a business, and two in Boulder County are on the list. They are:

• Lafayette (Overall rank: 98)
  
  • Business Environment: 59
  • Access to Resources: 191
  • Business Costs: 596
• Longmont (Overall rank: 130)
  • Business Environment: 43
  • Access to Resources: 624
  • Business Costs: 463

The business environment ranking reflects what it’s like to work in the city. WalletHub considered the average commute time, the length of the work week and growth in revenue to compile this ranking.

The access to resources category includes financing accessibility, working age population growth and job growth, while the business costs category takes into account tax rates, labor costs, office space affordability and more.

[Small graf outlining a few numbers, focusing on particularly high or low scores for any of the three major categories.]

The study looked at more than 1,200 cities with between 25,000 and 100,000 residents. Holland, Michigan, took honors as the best small city for a startup due in no small part to its No. 1 ranking in “access to resources,” which is one of three key categories WalletHub used in its study.

Business environment and business costs are the other two major categories. In all, WalletHub used 18 metrics — including average growth in small businesses, access to investors and labor costs — to score America’s small cities’ startup friendliness.

Here are the top 10 small cities for startups:

1: Holland, Michigan
2: St. George, Utah
3: Fort Myers, Florida
4: Redmond, Oregon
5: Cheyenne, Wyoming (tie)
5: Huntsville, Texas (tie)
7: Bozeman, Montana
8: Aberdeen, South Dakota
9: Bend, Oregon
10: Wilson, North Carolina

Suisun City, California, ended up in last place on the list.

Patch national staffer Geoff Dempsey wrote this report.