No small feat: Austin named best city for small business in U.S.

​​​​​​​AUSTIN - ​​Austin is the best city in the U.S. to start a small business, according to American City Business Journals.

The study looked at the country’s 106​​ largest metros and ranked them based on how they nurture the creation and development of small businesses.

For the rankings, a small business was defined as a company with one to 99 employees.

Here are some fast takeaways:

• 9.7 percent—that was the growth in the number of small businesses based in Austin from 2010–2013, which led the nation by a big margin (Provo, Utah, came in second at 6.8 percent).
• Austin had 44,163 small businesses in 2013—that’s 2,342 for every 100,000 residents.
• The city’s gross metropolitan product (a scaled-down version of gross domestic product, measuring all goods and services produced in the area) grew 18.2 percent from 2011-2014, second in the nation behind only Dallas.
• The share of jobs in the private sector labor market provided by small businesses was 35.1 percent in 2012.