The New Geography of Super-Charged Startup Cities

The location of startup companies is a key indicator of innovation, entrepreneurship and economic growth. But not all startups are created equal. What distinguishes leading-edge startup clusters is not just a large volume of companies, but a series of really successful startups like Apple, Google, Facebook or Twitter. These big successes, which go public and are worth billions of dollars, set a powerful example for other entrepreneurs and also create a pool of business people-turned-venture capitalists who can in turn use their money to invest in fledgling startups.

I've tracked the geography of startups in my series here at CityLab on Startup Cities, but a new study by the international investment firm Atomico provides detailed data on an intriguing subset of these uber-successful startups. It identifies the location of software companies founded in the past decade (since 2003) that have reached billion dollar valuations, 137 companies in total worldwide.