CNNMoney.com > Small Business > Best Places to Launch

  • Top large places
  • Top midsize places
  • Top small places
  • All metro areas
  • States
  • Cities
  • Lending hot spots
  • Cities
  • Fastest small business growth
  • Educated workers
  • Low crime
  • High income
  • Growing economy
  • Low wages
  • Best tax climate
  • Affordable rents
  • Fewest foreclosures
California
Rank Metro area Population # of small businesses
(1-49 employees)*
  Bakersfield 800,458 11,947
  Chico 220,337 4,881
  El Centro 163,972 2,439
  Fresno 909,153 15,691
  Hanford 149,518 1,603
  Los Angeles 12,872,808 325,132
  Madera 148,333 2,075
  Merced 246,117 2,989
  Modesto 510,694 8,711
  Napa 133,433 3,953
  Oxnard 797,740 19,477
  Redding 180,214 4,663
  Riverside 4,115,871 65,359
  Sacramento 2,109,832 44,948
  Salinas 408,238 8,576
  San Diego 3,001,072 74,956
  San Francisco 4,274,531 115,196
  San Jose 1,819,198 43,722
  San Luis Obispo 265,297 8,069
  Santa Barbara 405,396 11,026
  Santa Cruz 253,137 6,919
  Santa Rosa 466,741 13,594
  Stockton 672,388 10,975
  Vallejo 407,515 6,832
  Visalia 426,276 6,229
  Yuba City 165,274 2,647
Source: U.S. Census Bureau 2007 County Business Patterns.
Best Places Winners
MAPS
Pick a state

Alabama 3
Alaska 0
Arizona 0
Arkansas 1
California 0
Colorado 0
Connecticut 1
Delaware 0
District of Columbia 1
Florida 0
Georgia 0
Hawaii 0
Idaho 0
Illinois 1
Indiana 0
Iowa 4
Kansas 1
Kentucky 2
Louisiana 2
Maine 0
Maryland 1
Massachusetts 0
Michigan 0
Minnesota 0
Mississippi 2
Missouri 1
Montana 2
Nebraska 2
Nevada 0
New Hampshire 0
New Jersey 0
New Mexico 0
New York 1
North Carolina 4
North Dakota 3
Ohio 0
Oklahoma 2
Oregon 0
Pennsylvania 1
Rhode Island 0
South Carolina 0
South Dakota 2
Tennessee 1
Texas 8
Utah 1
Vermont 0
Virginia 1
Washington 0
West Virginia 1
Wisconsin 1
Wyoming 0
Find your launch spot
Do you prefer a place that is: Small Medium Large
The factors that matter most to me are:
 Affordable wages  Few foreclosures
 Educated workers  Low housing costs
 Low crime  High local incomes
 A growing economy  Population growth
 Growing small business population

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How we picked the Best Places
This year we partnered with the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation to find the 50 most business-friendly communities in America.

With help from Robert Fairlie, an economist and leading scholar of entrepreneurship at the University of California, Santa Cruz, we developed a methodology and sifted through such data on factors such as per capita income, hourly wages, workforce quality, crime rates, taxes and foreclosures. More

Comments? E-mail the editors
Data partners

This package was produced in partnership with the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

Foreclosure data provided by RealtyTrac.

Housing price-to-income data provided by Moody's Economy.com.

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