Tampa Bay and Surrounding Metros Listed as Best Places for Startup Businesses

Innovation in St. Pete
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A report from Roofstock, recently found that the Tampa Bay is among the top large metros for startup businesses in the U.S. Being near the University of Southern Florida coupled with relatively affordable housing and dynamic downtown development in both St. Petersburg and Tampa has led to Tampa Bay becoming a place that more and more up-and-coming businesses are looking at as a place to call home. Some of the best startup businesses to work for in St. Pete include Presence, Intrinio, Callyo & PandaDoc.

According to the report, the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater metro was ranked at No. 12 with a startup rate of 9.47%. This rate measures the five-year trailing startup formation based on the number of new firms divided by the total firms. This rate converts to 5,174 startup formations each year, these startups contributing to about 25,792 jobs a year with about 12.31% of the metro’s new jobs.

On the medium-sized list, the North Port-Sarasota-Bradenton metro area, located just south of Tampa Bay, has the fourth-most-startup activity. Typically, mid-sized cities have populations between 350,000 and 999,999. This area has a startup rate of 9.41% with startups accounting for 16.01% of its total new jobs. Another metro area that landed on the mid-sized list at No.13 was the Lakeland-Winter Haven area. The metro, located immediately to the east of Tampa Bay, had a startup rate of 8.45% with startups contributing 14.69% of the metros new jobs.

The state of Florida also ranked quite well for startups. It ranked No. 2 behind Nevada in terms of overall best states and its ranking was helped by its four major metro areas landing within the top 15. Orlando-Kissimmee-Stanford landed at No.2, Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach landed at No. 4, and Jacksonville metro areas landed at No. 9.

Even though Florida consists of mostly mid-sized metros, it had seven metros make the top 15. One metro area, The Villages even landed at No. 3 for the small metro list.

Within the same report it was found that management, wholesale trade and utilities have the largest decrease in startups, meanwhile construction, information and real estate industries have the largest.

To read the full article by Brendan Ward with the Tampa Bay INNO follow this link:

https://www.bizjournals.com/tampabay/inno/stories/news/2021/03/03/tampa-lakeland-sarasota-metros-among-areas-with.html

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