Marking Your Territory
While the “Big Three” of Silicon Valley, New England and the New York metro area continue to dominate U.S. venture capital, there is life for expansion stage companies outside of those regions. For example, cities like Chicago, Austin, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles have all made recent strides to carve out their own niches in the investment landscape.
As OpenView Market Research Analyst Nick Petri points out, increased investments outside of the traditional hot spots say as much about the value of the companies located there as it does the VCs that target them.
Entrepreneurship is really a self-reinforcing cycle. If a region starts generating successful companies, it attracts more capital, which leads to more successful companies. That’s what happened in Silicon Valley, Boston, and New York, and that’s what we’re beginning to see in these other cities now as well.”
Austin and D.C. in particular have built a growing relationship with enterprise software companies, while the Northwest has followed the leads of Amazon and Microsoft to make its mark on the e-commerce and cloud technology scenes.
“I think a lot of times, the VC business is mostly about people investing in truly great entrepreneurs and great teams,” explains Greg Gottesman, Managing Director with Seattle-based Madrona Venture Partners, one of the most active VCs in the area. “Naturally, when you have the world’s greatest e-commerce company right in your backyard, you’re going to have a lot of companies like that coming from this region.”
Meanwhile, the Midwest has worked to invest more than just money with the entrepreneur community. Organizations like the Chicago Entrepreneurial Center (CEC) work to mentor and support innovative business leaders throughout the early stages of company development.
Check out this exclusive report from OpenView Venture Partners for more details on the country’s up-and-coming areas for venture capital, with details on the hottest trends, sectors and more.
After Boston, New York, and Silicon Valley, what are the next best spots to start a company? This report highlights the up-and-coming places in the U.S. to raise capital.
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