Atlanta and Georgia lead U.S. in new business creation | Hacker News Reader

Atlanta and Georgia lead U.S. in new business creation

ajc.com

29 pointsbrianculler32 comments

Plenty of startup ideas, plenty of money, plenty of entrepreneurs in Atlanta. Not enough venture capital, but that's becoming less and less relevant to many classes of startups.

This is quite creditable for Atlanta. But I wouldn't say "Move over, SF". This includes all businesses, from new ice cream shops to new biotech companies. SF probably still leads if you look at tech startups.

You can see an informal list of the tech startups here:

http://www.atllogos.com/

They are showing 158 right now.

I seriously doubt if SF was ever leading in tech startups. I think you're confusing "digital media/entertainment" with "tech". SF is all about page ranks and eyeballs, just like TV channels are. Twitter is as much "tech" as Fox: each heavily depends on technology but hardly innovates/builds any.

I think Seattle, with their rich ecosystem of Microsoft-centric startups easily beats SV/SF as far as technology startups are concerned. Austin/Dallas duo is also tech-heavy, as well as Boston area.

Internet-media is only a niche and "technology" isn't just an alias to "web site", it actually has its own meaning.

I've lived and worked at startups in both places (Seattle, now SF), and the bay area is much more vibrant and active.

You're right that the bay area startups that you /hear/ about are largely media-oriented, but that's just confirmation bias. There are just tons of other startups and small companies that you don't hear about. In Seattle, people still look at you a little funny if you work at a startup (why wouldn't you just work at Microsoft or Amazon?)

I'm very proud to run an ATL startup, and from the article it sounds like there are many others who feel the same way.

As am I, but honestly I had no idea about the startup activity here. Are there any meetings where founders get together and such?

Geez, yes. To the point that if you went to all of them you'd never get any actual work done.

Nice illustration of all the meetups, organizations, conferences, etc:

http://academicvc.com/2009/05/entrepreneurial-atlanta-2/

Wow, thanks. I'm fairly new to the area, and my startup occupies the majority of my time, so I have met few other founders so far. I'll have to leave my cave from time to time to hit some of these.

Check out @startupgossip on Twitter. I'm trying to post most of the events there. I also post stuff on my blog at sanjayparekh.com (altho I've been slack lately) when it comes to events I'm running. Start coming to events and you'll meet a ton of us who are in and around Atlanta doing startups.

Hmm, spend most of your time in your cave. What Brian said is right. There are so many events that it's easy to get caught up in the scene and spend more time talking about startups than actually working on one.

This mixes up "startups" (leveraging, VC investment candidates) with "new small businesses". Hey, always good to see people doing the entrepreneurship thang, but terms matter. It's like the notion of a scientific "theory". Don't willfully misuse the term.

I was one of those 590/100,000!

Actually, it's even higher here in Atlanta. 740 per 100K, of which I am also included :)

By all means, count my Midtown living self in the 740 also.

i wonder what the ratio looks like for just midtown :)

With GT right there I'd imagine its off the charts.

Here's a link to the original study: http://www.kauffman.org/uploadedFiles/kiea_042709.pdf

Interesting tidbit: "Internet publishing" was considered a low-income-potential business but "software publishing" was considered a high-income-potential business.

They probably include blogging in Internet publishing.

Previous discussion about the study: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=597809

Starting a "new business" does not equal starting a startup (at least in terms relevant to News.YC)

"entrepreneurial activity" wouldn't fit in HN's 85 character limit for story titles ;)

I really want to do a meet up here in Atlanta.

I can't help but be tangentially reminded of this: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

Why?

2 days in a row, same author, 2 of the same article in the the atlanta journal constitution with the same spiel about Georgia having a high startup rate all with pretty much the same quotes from different state government related people...I'm sure there are more elsewhere if I look.

http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/printedition/2009/05/19/ent...

http://www.ajc.com/business/content/business/stories/2009/05...

If i had to guess its a positive pr push from business associations based on a study that found in the states favor...

As for why the study is dumb see the thread thats the parent of this guy's comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=598317

I'm not knocking atlanta in anyway, just didnt see the need for the downvotes on anyone who tried to offer a counterpoint to the lovefest

As a job seeker, I'd expect a city with super-high startup activity to have its /eng/ section on craigslist flooded with job ads. It isn't.

http://atlanta.craigslist.org/eng/

You're confusing startups with tech startups.

This is always an interesting question for me. What exactly is a "startup" I recently created a technical services company (software design and development). I don't consider it a "startup" per se, mostly because I'm not creating a product so much as a service.

Anyway this report is about new business creation which is an interesting data point.

This is a number of total businesses started, not just technical/engineering ones.

just because some areas might use craigslist for tech recruiting doesn't mean they all do.

http://www.atlanta.computerjobs.com/ -- 1363 tech jobs http://www.newyork.computerjobs.com/ -- 2674 tech jobs

Metro NY is roughly 4 times larger than metro ATL and only has 2 times the number of tech jobs... Of course, this comparison is pretty much as valid as the craiglist one.

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