2024 Best of The Midwest:

Startup City Rankings

Every year, we dive into the data to provide an analytical, objective benchmark to help startup stakeholders from founders and VCs to community champions and elected officials understand how cities within the Midwest are performing relative to each other in their tech startup ecosystems.

2023 - 2024 Highlights

Chicago: Tempus IPO’d at $6.6B market cap, Tegus was acquired for $930M, Kin became a Unicorn, Mediafly raised $80M, Ocient $49.4M Series B, and Tovala $45M. 6 firms announced $80M+ new funds: Lightbank, 7wire, 53 Stations, Distributed, HPVP, Motivate
Pittsburgh: Skild AI raised a $300M Series A, Abridge $150M C, Gecko Robotics $100M C+, Free Market Health $20M B, Gather AI $17M A, and Black Tech Nation Ventures announced a $50M inaugural fund
Minneapolis: Flywheel raised a $54M Series D, Inbound Health $30M B, Herself Health $26M A, Fulcrum an $18M A2, and Rally announced a $240M fund
Indianapolis: 120Water raised $43M, PAXAFE $9M A, ConverSight $9M A, and High Alpha announced a $125M fund
Rounds throughout the Midwest: Ann Arbor’s May Mobility $105M D, Censys $50M C, and Voxel51 $30M B. St. Louis’ Lumeris $100M, Columbus’ Beam Benefits $40M and Asset Watch $38M B, Detroit’s Kode Labs $30M B, Lexington’s PayHOA $27.5M A, Cincinnati’s Coterie $27M and Abre $24M A, Fargo’s Bushel $26M, Wichita’s Weavix $23.6M B, Sioux Falls’ Prismatic $22M B, Milwaukee’s Sift Healthcare $20M B, and Cleveland’s Champ Titles $18M C
Funds throughout the Midwest: Omaha’s McCarthy announced an $870M fund, Ann Arbor’s Arboretum $268M, Milwaukee’s Baird $218M, Detroit’s Assembly $76M, Green Bay’s TitletownTech $70M, Madison’s NVNG $50M FoF, and Grand Rapids’ Grand $50M

Key Takeaways

Explore the Cities

Rankings Legend

1-10

11-25

> 25

Moved up in rank

Moved down in rank

Detailed Data

How Rankings are Calculated

Data is through 6/30/24

Startup Activity

43.5% Weight

A measure of how active and vibrant the startup community in each city is. Factors included are how many active startups are in the CBSA, the growth in startup formation over the last 5 years, the number of exits, and the scale of large outcomes in the last 10 years - exits and fundraises of $50M and higher.

Source: Pitchbook

Access To Resources

39% Weight

A measure of how supportive the city's ecosystem is and resources available to help startups grow. This includes how much each Metro has raised from VCs, the number of local investors, incubators/accelerators, universities, and government support.

Source: the US Census, US Patent & Trademark Office, Fortune.com, Pitchbook, US News & World Report, The Global Accelerator Network, US Small Business Administration and individual state websites.

Business Climate

17.5% Weight

A measure of how conducive the city's economic environment is to attract and scale a business. It includes demographic and economic factors such as the cost of living, labor costs, business tax friendliness, and population and GDP per capita. As well as ‘connectivity’ indicators like nearness to an airport, number of non-stop flights, highway infrastructure, and quality of internet access.

Source: the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the US Census, the Tax Foundation, the National Digital Inclusion Alliance and Google Flights.

Annual Rankings