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
Florida
Rank Metro area Population # of small businesses
(1-49 employees)*
  Bradenton 687,823 20,662
  Cape Coral 593,136 16,391
  Deltona 498,036 12,684
  Fort Walton Beach 179,693 5,168
  Gainesville 258,555 5,937
  Jacksonville 1,313,228 34,416
  Lakeland 580,594 11,228
  Miami 5,414,772 172,101
  Naples 315,258 10,211
  Ocala 329,628 7,139
  Orlando 2,054,574 55,764
  Palm Bay 536,521 13,477
  Palm Coast 91,247 1,888
  Panama City 163,946 4,508
  Pensacola 452,992 9,389
  Port St. Lucie 403,768 10,184
  Punta Gorda 150,060 3,796
  Tallahassee 357,259 8,573
  Tampa 2,733,761 70,115
  Vero Beach 132,315 n/a
Source: U.S. Census Bureau 2007 County Business Patterns.
Best Places Winners
MAPS
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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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ireportTell us why: Low taxes? Talented workers? An active small business community? Send us your photos and videos, and you could be featured in our upcoming coverage of reader-picked Best Places to Launch. More
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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