Barcelona Among The Top 30 Most Active Startup Cities Worldwide

As the entrepreneurial wave continues to rise around the world, various groups are trying to organize relevant data to paint a clearer picture of which global cities host the most active startup ecosystems.  The various methodologies include open-source methods like Startup Genome, wiki models such as CrunchBase, and tapping into the data from active entrepreneurial platforms such as Angelist, Gust, and even Foundum based right here in Barcelona.

The most recent such project is called SeedTable and by their analysis the city of Barcelona ranks 30^th worldwide and 4^th in Europe (behind London #3, Berlin #13, and Paris #16 respectively).  SeedCamp collects their data exclusively from CrunchBase, the free database of technology companies, people, and investors that anyone can edit.  While this is limited in the scope of the research collected, it may prove an interesting starting point to measure global startup activity.  Seedtable has analyzed information on more than 42,500 startups in over 150 cities and may be working with Angelist and other platform APIs to increase their sample size further.

It’s no surprise that San Francisco and New York top the list, but the breakdown differs drastically from previously released reports from StartupGenome that takes a significantly more comprehensive deep dive into city-based entrepreneurial activity.  The Seedtable activity is based on four factors: the number of new startups founded, finding investment, whether from business angels or raising venture capital, and the number of exits.  At a glance, the CrunchBase data is representing only a fraction of the startup activity taking place in Barcleona.  In 2012, Barcelona reported 10 new startups founded, 12 startups receiving funding from Angel investors, 11 startups raising professional money from VCs, and 0 exits.

Of course this is an incomplete data set for Barcelona, but perhaps it represents a similar microcosm of activity in all cities listed, in which case it still proves relevant and worth further examination.  On the other hand, if based only on how often a particular city’s entrepreneurs update the CrunchBase wiki then the results become fairly irrelevant.  In fact, it may just be a creative ploy that Crunchbase is using to encourage more startups to keep their database up to date…

All maps created by the Martin Prosperity Institute’s Zara Matheson with from data provided by Seedtable.