The Tool Desk
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Start with what the company needs next
Before comparing cities, list the work the business must complete over the coming months and what it depends on. The right location for customer discovery may not be the right one for a regulated launch, a laboratory, manufacturing, a specialized sales team, or an expansion into a new market.
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- Write down the next milestones and their deadlines.
- Identify dependencies: particular hires, customers, investors, facilities, approvals, suppliers, or partners.
- Mark which dependencies require physical proximity and which can be served remotely or through periodic travel.
- Separate requirements from preferences. A necessary approval pathway is not interchangeable with a desirable founder community.
This turns “Which city has the best startup scene?” into a more useful question: “Which of these locations gives this company practical access to what it needs next?”
Compare the factors that affect execution
A startup ecosystem is more than a concentration of companies. It includes interacting people, organisations, institutions, and processes—such as firms, investors, banks, universities, and public bodies. OECD’s Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Diagnostics treats finance and networks as part of the broader resources and relationships that support entrepreneurship. Evaluate how those elements work together for your company, not as isolated city scores.
Talent
Specify the roles and seniority you need, then assess the local recruiting pool, likely compensation, and realistic time to hire. A broad “tech talent” label does not establish that a city has enough people with a niche specialty, relevant experience, or willingness to join an early-stage company. Check actual candidates and hiring channels rather than relying on a general reputation.
Funding
Map investors who fund your sector and stage, and look for evidence of relevant activity. Consider how often founders need to meet them in person and what maintaining those relationships would cost in time and travel. The presence of venture investors or angels is not a promise that your company will be funded; finance is one resource within a wider ecosystem.
Customers and markets
Assess whether proximity to customers, buyers, suppliers, or industry partners materially improves sales, discovery, or delivery. A city may be attractive because it is near a sector cluster or because its regulatory setting matters to your product. If customers can be reached just as effectively from elsewhere, do not treat a large local market as an automatic advantage.
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Networks and institutions
Look for reachable founders, mentors, universities, accelerators, service providers, industry groups, and public bodies relevant to the business. The useful question is not how many organisations exist, but whether the founders can access people who can solve a current problem, make a relevant introduction, or provide needed expertise.
Total cost and runway
Build a company-specific estimate rather than comparing rent alone. Include wages, workspace, founder living expenses, taxes, relocation, travel, and any specialized facilities. Account for the cost of sustaining investor and customer relationships if a location makes regular travel necessary.
CBRE’s 2026 tech talent market cost comparison combines wages and real estate using a modeled 500-person technology company with 60,000 square feet of office space. That can help frame market-level comparisons, but its model is not a small startup’s budget; do not transfer its absolute costs to a company with a different headcount or footprint.
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Infrastructure, regulation, and founder constraints
Check the infrastructure and rules that affect your particular operation, along with immigration eligibility, employment and business requirements, household needs, and lifestyle. Legal eligibility and obligations depend on the founder and company’s circumstances; broad ecosystem comparisons cannot settle jurisdiction-specific questions. Verify them for each location under consideration.
Build a like-for-like shortlist
Keep the shortlist to two or three real options if possible. Use the same criteria for each city, then give more weight to the factors that determine the next milestones. A simple worksheet can make assumptions visible without pretending to produce an objective universal score.
| Criterion | Evidence to collect for each location | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Relevant talent | Candidate availability for named roles, seniority, compensation, and expected hiring time | Tests whether the team can be built on the required schedule |
| Relevant capital | Investors active at the company’s stage and in its sector; access and relationship costs | Distinguishes useful funding access from investor presence in general |
| Customers and partners | Priority customer access, sector relationships, suppliers, and sales reach | Shows whether location improves discovery, delivery, or growth |
| Operating and personal costs | Wages, workspace, facilities, taxes, living expenses, relocation, and travel | Connects location costs to runway and founder sustainability |
| Networks and institutions | Accessible founders, universities, accelerators, service providers, and relevant public bodies | Measures practical support rather than ecosystem size alone |
| Infrastructure and regulatory fit | Required facilities, operating conditions, approvals, and verified legal requirements | Identifies constraints that could delay or prevent the business plan |
| Reversibility | Costs and disruption of changing location if assumptions prove wrong | Highlights the downside of committing before uncertainty is resolved |
For each criterion, record the evidence, its date, and confidence in it. Distinguish a verified requirement or conversation from an estimate, reputation, or assumption. Weight criteria against the startup’s actual milestones; avoid adding everything into one score if the weights obscure a decisive constraint.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Use rankings and public indicators as context, not verdicts
City rankings can help generate questions or identify places worth investigating, but their order depends on which dimensions are measured and how they are weighted. FounderCities’ 2026 index covers 110 cities and scores seven criteria: access to capital, access to talent, unicorn density, cost of failure, taxes, business environment, and quality of life. The index describes its v0.2 scores as editorial estimates calibrated against public ecosystem reports; it says a fully data-sourced pipeline is future work. Its weights can be changed, which changes rankings. Treat the results as a starting framework, not a definitive answer for your company.
For European Union context, the European Commission’s 2026 EU Startup and Scaleup Scoreboard covers 36 indicators across six dimensions, including finance, talent, infrastructure, networks and services, regulation, expansion, and impact. It is country-oriented, not a direct ranking of every city, so it cannot substitute for city-level checks.
The OECD’s first-edition pilot diagnostics covers 38 OECD countries. It can help frame national ecosystem conditions, but it is not a definitive city comparison. Likewise, a city cost figure is difficult to compare unless its method and reference date are clear. The Startup Project comparison page says its cost index sets 100 equal to the US national average, but its retrieved page does not establish the methodology or data dates. Avoid treating its individual city figures as authoritative current values.
Validate assumptions before committing
Use conversations and, where practical, a time-limited visit or trial to test whether the shortlist works in real life. Schedule meetings with people who can speak directly to the company’s dependencies, not only general ecosystem advocates.
- Test customer access: arrange conversations with prospective buyers, partners, or suppliers and assess whether location changes the quality or speed of access.
- Test hiring: speak with potential candidates, recruiters, and relevant professional communities about role availability, compensation, and hiring timelines.
- Test funding access: meet relevant investors and founders they have backed to understand stage and sector fit, expected engagement, and relationship cadence.
- Test operational support: check facilities, service providers, university or public programs, and any required approvals directly with the relevant organisations.
- Test founder sustainability: evaluate the practical effect on household needs, immigration eligibility, travel, lifestyle, and the cost of reversing a move.
Update the comparison when field evidence contradicts the initial assumptions. If a location’s main advantage cannot be reached in practice, it should not retain the same weight in the decision.
Make the choice around the next milestone
Choose the city that best supports the company’s highest-priority dependencies at a cost and level of personal disruption the founders can sustain. If no option clearly wins, identify the deciding uncertainty and test it before making an expensive, difficult-to-reverse move. A city is a strategic input to execution—not a substitute for customer demand, a capable team, or a sound business.
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