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The Top 100 Trending Startup Cities

by David SmookeFebruary 16th, 2022

Too Long; Didn't Read

Startup of the Year Voting closed after a 6 month run from June 2021 to January 2022. On Valentine’s Day, the startup of the year winners were announced and we open sourced this startup voting data if anyone would like to use it. By digging into the aggregate vote count each city’s startups earned, we can approximate the HackerNoon community’s interest for startups in all the major cities of the world.

Companies Mentioned

featured image - The Top 100 Trending Startup Cities

Do you wonder where startups trend?

Startup of the Year Voting closed after a 6 month run from June 2021 to January 2022. On Valentine’s Day, the startup of the year winners were announced and we open sourced this startup voting data if anyone would like to use it (still cleaning up and better organizing some of the data, thanks for the patience! I wanted to share some early learnings).

All of the startup winners earned tech company news pages on HackerNoon. Essentially, the community voted on which startups deserve more coverage. These pages include business overviews (such as head count, founding year, bio, social links, and domain ranking) coupled with dynamic updates every time the company is mentioned in HackerNoon stories or relevant headlines around the web.

By digging into the aggregate vote count each city’s startups earned, we can approximate the HackerNoon community’s interest for startups in all the major cities of the world.

Most voted on Startup City Award (Rank By Votes, Name, Population, Votes)

RANK	NAME	POPULATION	VOTES
1	Boulder	124345	14564
2	Singapore	4608167	12889
3	New York City	18713220	10507
4	San Francisco	744041	8064
5	Miami	6445545	7953
6	Redwood City	86380	7894
7	Porto	263131	4714
8	City Of London	7512400	3776
9	Los Angeles	3849378	3566
10	Tel Aviv	460613	3358
11	Zug	30934	3358
12	Beiru	1792000	2406
13	Santiago	5477804	2331
14	Vilnius	553038	1961
15	Bucarest	1,883,425	1798
16	Boston	559034	1555
17	Copenhagen	501158	1461
18	Kyiv	2,962,180	1450
19	Chicago	2833321	1279
20	Lisbon	1962000	1189
21	Louisville	1005654	1154
22	Berlin	3387800	1150
23	Tallinn	391000	1127
24	Norwich	121553	1124
25	Alexandria	159,467	1103
26	Stockholm	761721	1086
27	Sydney	4119190	1033
28	Hyderabad	6,900,00	1014
29	Las Vegas	552539	928
30	Murcia	422861	911
31	Johannesburg	3225796	900
32	Denver	566974	868
33	Hanoi	3977000	757
34	Brussels	964405	700
35	São Paulo	10886518	573
36	Oakland	433031	566
37	Sofia	1076000	564
38	Amsterdam	739300	562
39	San Luis Obispo	62290	552
40	Los Altos	30089	537
41	Cape Town	2967000	527
42	Mahé	77000	515
43	Lahore	5063499	510
44	Indianapolis	795484	495
45	Arlington	398854	471
46	Melbourne	3592591	452
47	Berkeley	121363	451
48	Kansas City	1636715	445
49	Tallinna	444,532	438
50	Austin	709893	428
51	Lusaka	1246000	422
52	Portland	537081	411
53	Grand Cayman	71100	404
54	South San Francisco	67789	404
55	Scottsdale	258069	403
56	Seoul	9714000	377
57	Riyadh	5126000	372
58	Dnipropetrovsk	1040000	360
59	Mexico City	14007495	350
60	Venice	268934	344
61	Lublin	357200	343
62	Bangalore	5686844	343
63	Pune	3755525	341
64	Ankara	3023000	338
65	San Mateo	104430	320
66	Jaipur	2324319	316
67	Seattle	582454	314
68	San Diego	1256951	313
69	Monterrey	1140639	312
70	Tampa	2908063	309
71	Baltimore	635815	301
72	Lucknow	2266933	289
73	Central	175500	287
74	Brooklyn	2559903	263
75	Minsk	1705000	258
76	Aalborg	142937	256
77	Tel Aviv-yafo	368635	254
78	Gliwice	199900	253
79	Antwerp	466203	225
80	Almaty	1209000	225
81	Munich	1249200	204
82	Kuala Lumpur	1352000	199
83	Belo Horizonte	2412937	195
84	Dublin	506211	194
85	San Jose	929936	185
86	Haifa	269417	183
87	Brisbane	1763131	183
88	Noida	642381	181
89	Lewes	29187	177
90	Palo Alto	65364	177
91	Hermosillo	687968	175
92	Zürich	347517	170
93	Flemington	4577	167
94	Columbus	733203	167
95	Torino	852223	165
96	New Orleans	1020886	164
97	Sheung Wan	14981	164
98	Atlanta	498715	162
99	Heraklion	211370	160
100	Dover	104490	157

IMHO this data indicates locations that have historically have been more welcoming to startups through various business and tax incentives, such as Zug (13th), Mahé (44th) and Grand Caymen (55th), are all rewarded with worldwide interest in their startups that far exceeds their local populations.

Surprisingly, Redwood City (7894 votes) received 44X the amount of votes as Palo Alto (177 votes), which historically has been more of a glorified startup scene. Also I’m not sure why, but am impressed than Porto is also hanging with San Francisco in the top ten as cities whose startup interest drastically out paces their population.

Boulder rising all the way to #1 could be a product of HackerNoon’s HQ being based in Colorado, but Boulder is nowhere near a top ten city in terms of historical readership to HackerNoon. It certainly was an overall interest in the Boulder startup scene as opposed to a single startup or two driving the activity as first, second and third place were all within a close margin (567, 527 and 520 votes respectively).

I’m looking into this data more! Will be posting what I learn here on HackerNoon.