City of innovation
Houston earns top-10 rank among best U.S. cities for entrepreneurs
The Bayou City ranks highly thanks to a high quality-of-living score and more.
Houston joins Dallas and Austin in a new ranking of the 10 best U.S. cities for entrepreneurs to live.
Houston appears at No. 7 on the list, compiled by SumUp, which provides payment and banking services for businesses. In part, the Bayou City ranks well thanks to a high quality-of-living score. Houston also fares well due to the lack of a state income tax and state capital gains tax, and a state sales tax rate of 6.25 percent.
Here are the top 10 places in the U.S. for entrepreneurs to live, according to SumUp:
- New York City
- Chicago
- Miami
- Los Angeles
- Dallas
- Austin
- Houston
- Seattle
- Washington, D.C.
- Boston
SumUp, based in the United Kingdom, weighed 16 factors to come up with the ranking. These factors included tax rates, number of millionaires, internet speeds, and number of international airports.
Not surprisingly, the ranking factors featured a decidedly British slant. For instance, the ranking took into account Google and TikTok search volumes in the United Kingdom for “Moving to [city name].”
Of course, Houston offers more entrepreneurial advantages than the ones cited by SumUp. For example:
- Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business ranks as the country’s No. 1 graduate entrepreneurship program, according to The Princeton Review and Entrepreneur magazine.
- The University of Houston’s Cyvia and Melvyn Wolff Center for Entrepreneurship at the C.T. Bauer College of Business ranks as the No. 1 undergraduate entrepreneurship program, according to The Princeton Review and Entrepreneur magazine.
- The George W. Bush Presidential Center awarded Houston the No. 6 spot on its 2024 ranking of the top U.S. metro areas for university innovation.
- A 2023 ranking from the LendingTree personal finance website put Houston in 13th place among the U.S. metro areas where minority entrepreneurs are enjoying the most success.
“Houston’s reputation for entrepreneurship is inextricably linked to the city’s diversity,” the Understanding Houston website notes. “The growing populations in Houston from diverse backgrounds, namely immigrants and people of color, are not only the economic and cultural driving force for the evolution of our city, but also the future of our country.”
---
A version of this story originally appeared on our sister site InnovationMap.
