San Francisco is the country’s best city for female entrepreneurs.
Image: Salim Virji via Flickr CC
A new report from NerdWallet, a personal finance site, has ranked the top ten cities for female entrepreneurs. In business, women are sorely underrepresented, with only about four percent of Fortune 500 companies led by female CEOs. But as the years go on, women are getting more and more recognition within the business field for their innovative and inspiring practices. And with people like Warren Buffett vying for women to get more involved in big business, things are looking up all the time.
NerdWallet ranked U.S. cities based on four factors: the ratio of businesses to every 100 people, the percentage of female-owned businesses, the median income and unemployment rate, and the percent of residents over 25 who have a Bachelor’s degree. The ideology behind those four factors was to determine how entrepreneurial a city was in general, how strong of an economy it had, and how educated the local workforce was.
The top ten cities for female entrepreneurs, listed beginning with number ten, include the following:
10. San Diego, CA: Overall score – 45.9
9. Denver, CO: Overall score – 47.7
8. Raleigh, NC: Overall score – 48.5
7. Austin, TX: Overall score – 48.7
6. Atlanta, GA: Overall score – 50.1
5. Portland, OR: Overall score – 50.6
4. Minneapolis, MN: Overall score – 51.8
3. Washington, DC: Overall score – 58.0
2. Seattle, WA: Overall score – 63.0
1. San Francisco, CA: Overall score – 63.4
The city with the best business to resident ratio was San Francisco, with 13.7 businesses for every 100 residents. Washington, D.C. had the highest percentage of women-owned businesses, with 34.5%. The highest per capita income was awarded to San Francisco with $46,777 median income. Austin, TX, had the lowest unemployment rate, with just 6.2% of people officially recorded as out-of-work. Lastly, the most educated city went to Seattle, with 55.8% of the population in possession of a Bachelor’s degree—not to mention the fact that Seattle is home to a number of four-year universities and community colleges.
This week, we’ve profiled inspiring entrepreneur Sara Blakely, founder of SPANX shape wear. Blakely is the youngest self-made female billionaire to date at the age of just 42. Be sure to check out her full profile!
