There are three kinds of lies, Mark Twain famously observed: lies, damned lies, and statistics. Sometimes all three varieties can be found in a single specimen. Take, for instance, the solons at Startup Genome, a San Francisco-based research and policy advisory firm that helps governments nurture their entrepreneurial ecosystems. As such firms often do to […]
There are three kinds of lies, Mark Twain famously observed: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Sometimes all three varieties can be found in a single specimen. Take, for instance, the solons at Startup Genome, a San Francisco-based research and policy advisory firm that helps governments nurture their entrepreneurial ecosystems.
As such firms often do to build brand and buzz, Startup Genome last month released a ranking of startup ecosystems in 150 U.S. cities. The “Surge Cities Index” ranked metro areas on a number of metrics including job creation, population growth, net business creation, rate of entrepreneurship and early-stage finding deals.
Tally them all up, the website suggested, and you get a pretty good idea of the best places to start and grow a new company.
The list for 2020 is littered with many of the usual suspects for entrepreneurial energy — Durham, N.C., Austin, Tex., Charleston, S.C., Colorado Springs. Then scrolling down to No. 25 (just after Atlanta, but one step ahead of Sacramento) was (drum roll, please) Bridgeport?
Some of the numbers Startup Genome summoned were real eye-poppers: “19,200 businesses created in the first half of this year [2019]” and “skilled labor pumped in by the 18 colleges and universities within a 50-mile radius.”
Overall Surge Cities ranked the Park City No. 3 nationally in “Rate of Entrepreneurship” and No. 10 in overall wage growth.
For a reality check, we summoned our own data-resource center, informally known as the WTF Index. The first question to be addressed was, what is Startup Genome’s definition of “Bridgeport”? Is it Fairfield County? Is it the state labor department’s Bridgeport-Stamford labor market area? The notion of nearly 20,000 new companies in a city of 160,000 simply didn’t hold water.
The reality is something a bit more to scale: Between Jan. 1 and June 30, 2019, 757 new companies were formed within the actual city of Bridgeport. That’s according to the Secretary of the State’s office, which is Connecticut’s official repository of legal filings pertaining to companies.
By contrast, the figure for Stamford over the same period was 903 new companies. In New Haven, 610 new companies were formed in the first half of 2019.
