Research Data

August 16By Comments OffRead more...

Nashvegas vs. Funkytown Startup Scene

There are 16 cities that have raised at least one billion dollars in early-stage capital from 2015-2020. Of those 16 cities, nine of them have less than one million people. If we remove outliers like San Francisco, Boston, and Austin which are well-established hotbeds for startup activity, we are left with Seattle, Atlanta, Denver, Oakland, Washington DC, and Nashville. These six cities have an average population of 630,603: roughly 300,000 less than the estimated population of Fort Worth in 2022. This begs the question: What are these cities doing right from an entrepreneurial perspective that Fort Worth can learn from?...

August 4By 0 CommentsRead more...

The Fastest Growing Companies in Fort Worth

Inc. Magazine annually publishes a list of the top 5,000 fastest growing companies across the nation. As of March 2020, there were an estimated 11 million companies in the United States. That being said, the top 5,000 fastest growing companies only comprise the top .05% of companies. This list is the honor roll of all honor rolls. Arguably, the term ‘honor’ is an understatement.  To comprehend the metrics of the list, it’s important to delve into how the list is calculated. First, Inc. Magazine doesn’t take any company into account until it applies to be on the list. So hypothetically, the...

June 28By 0 CommentsRead more...

An Indicator of Innovation: SBIR Grants

Innovation can be hard to measure. One way to track it is through Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants from the US government. The number of SBIR grants awarded in Fort Worth is far below the level it needs to be for our community to foster an innovation-led economy. Recommendations on how to address this issue are included.

May 20By Comments OffRead more...

Texas Startup Indicators: 2020 Update

Early Stage Capital Slips Again Fort Worth-based startup companies raised $13 million in early stage capital in 2020. If that sounds low, it’s because it is, especially when compared to other large Texas cities and to the nation as a whole. In fact, while the United States set a 10 year high for most capital invested ($148B), Fort Worth actually slipped in its funding efforts, raising $4 million less than our previous five-year average of $17 million per year. In the past, we’ve looked at early-stage capital raised in Texas’s largest cities. This time we are taking a look at 2020’s updated...

March 9By Comments OffRead more...

Fort Worth is Coming for you, Albuquerque!

As we have discussed previously on this blog, Fort Worth is now the 13th largest city in the country, but it ranks 40th in early stage funding when compared to other US cities. In this post we will explore how Fort Worth compares to these cities in a variety of other metrics, plus we will discuss some reasonable targets we could set to move up in the rankings. Our team analyzed early stage funding using Pitchbook, the proprietary research tool that focuses on early stage investment data, to see where Fort Worth ranked compared to the top 50 largest cities (by...

February 18By Comments OffRead more...

Growth of 40,000+%? (Yeah, you read that right)

Each year, Inc. Magazine puts out its list of the 5,000 fastest growing companies in America. Think of it like the Forbes 500 (largest US companies) for startups. To be on this list is prestigious and it means your company is doing something right and growing at warp speed. In 2020, the #1 company on the list -- the fastest growing company in America (OneTrust) -- grew at an astonishing 48,377 percent over the last three years. Yeah, that’s hyper growth. But how did local companies do? Where did Fort Worth-based companies come out on this list? How did we do...

October 15By Comments OffRead more...

Fort Worth Private Equity Funding

In a previous blog post, we looked at early stage capital investment in Fort Worth, and where the city stood in comparison to other Texas and US cities. We established that Fort Worth doesn’t have a lot of early stage capital, but it turns out there’s plenty of private equity (PE) money here, which tends to invest in later stage, more established companies. Relatively speaking, that assumption is correct. We looked at data from Pitchbook to see just how much PE was being invested in Fort Worth and how that compares to other Texas cities. As seen in the chart below, companies...