An Ideal Location For: Specialty companies. Internationally oriented companies. Financial and business services. The New York metro area has more than 28,000 business-service establishments, L.A. about 18,000. Most of America's other big cities have fewer than 5,000.
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Population Magnets
Prototype: Orlando, whose pay-rolls grew 15% in only two years, before the recession hit. Riverside, Calif., east of Los Angeles, expecting 20% employment growth between now and 1996. Like a river, population is flowing south and west: every one of the top 10 job growers in the next five years is in a Sunbelt state.
Up-and-comer: Las Vegas. Still not a big city -- 1990 metropolitan population was only 750,000 -- the gambling mecca tops nearly every growth chart. Number of jobs rose 8% in the last two years.
An Entrepreneur's Dream: Plenty of labor. Plenty of land. Growing markets, both business and consumer. "Las Vegas can be a dynamite place to start a business," says Tom Carns, founder of PDQ Printing. "Most of the companies are small." Like PDQ, your company can grow with its customers.
An Entrepreneur's Nightmare: The curse of any frontier, namely, that a lot of people arrived only yesterday. "You wouldn't take a personal check from people here unless they have a check-guarantee card from their bank," says Carns.
The Ideal Location For: Anybody looking for booming local markets. "In a static area, a start-up has to take market share away from existing suppliers," points out Martin Holdrich of Woods & Poole Economics Inc. "Growing areas demand new output and new suppliers." Will population flows reverse themselves? Not anytime soon, says Holdrich.
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Middle-of-the-Roaders
Prototype: Salt Lake City. Not huge, not on either coast, not cosmopolitan, not known for any particular industry. Loved by residents, ignored by everybody else.
Up-and-comers: Kansas City; Des Moines.
An Entrepreneur's Dream: Good education. Utah has the highest literacy rate of any state, Iowa the highest SAT scores, Kansas City the most innovative inner-city school-reform program. Low cost of living. Easy access, internally and externally. "A tie-up on our interstates is when traffic slows to 25," says Jerry Stogsdill of Greater Kansas City's Silicon Prairie Technology Association. "And the airport can sometimes seem like a ghost town, it's so easy to get in and out of."
An Entrepreneur's Nightmare: Shortage of capital, particularly from organized venture-capital firms. Also, "the old perception/reality thing," says one Kansas City business owner, explaining why even local customers look down their noses at homegrown suppliers. "People don't expect to be able to get what they need locally."
The Ideal Location For: Office operations. (Des Moines's insurance industry is second only to Hartford's.) Telemarketers (well-educated workers, no regional accent). Any company selling or shipping from one location to a national market.
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Rustbelt Revivals
Prototype: Pittsburgh. From defunct steel town to most-livable city, in a few short years.
Up-and-comers: Cleveland; Rochester, N.Y. Revivified manufacturing base complemented by new service industries.
An Entrepreneur's Dream: Well-established universities set up specialized research-and-development centers, then spin off dozens of advanced-technology companies. City and state governments realize the importance of entrepreneurship. There's "an atmosphere that recognizes the future of this region lies in small business," says Albert Van Kirk of King's Medical Co., in suburban Cleveland.
An Entrepreneur's Nightmare: In some industries, strong unions. "They can make it hard on you if they want to," says a company owner in the construction industry.
The Ideal Location For: Technologically sophisticated manufacturing. Rochester mounts a collaborative effort in next-generation optics-manufacturing technology. The Cleveland Advanced Manufacturing Program helps small companies learn the latest production technology.
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Urban Boutiques
Prototypes: Austin, Tex.; Cambridge, Mass.; Raleigh-Durham, N.C. Smaller, university-based cities; some are state capitals. Durable economies with high concentrations of Ph.D.'s. "These are the cities that will be growing," says Jim Renzas, executive vice-president of Paragon Decision Resources Inc., in Irvine, Calif. "They're the places of the '90s."
Up-and-comers: Madison, Wis.; Boulder, Colo.
An Entrepreneur's Dream: The urban boutiques keep repopulating themselves with highly educated people. "The most successful companies are knowledge-intensive companies that need to be able to recruit bright, talented people out of good universities," adds Renzas.
An Entrepreneur's Nightmare: A lot of generals, not many soldiers. If your company needs regular, dependable help at lower skill levels, set up shop somewhere else.
An Ideal Location For: R&D. Other high-value-added operations such as specialty professional-service firms.
