Seattle rainbow

Silicon Valley remains the king of the hill when it comes to startup hubs. But there are a number of other communities that are developing strong entrepreneurial ecosystems, including Tel Aviv, Los Angeles, Seattle and New York, according to a new report out today from The Startup Genome.

The report placed Seattle right in the mix in fourth place behind Tel Aviv and LA, and just ahead of New York and Boston. Seattle was buoyed in part because of its strength of tech talent (ranked second only behind Silicon Valley).

Interestingly, Seattle’s ranking marks a significant improvement from the Startup Genome’s report earlier this year when the Emerald City ranked 13th. In that report, New York City ranked second. (Previously on GeekWireHey, NYC: There’s a tech hub out here called Seattle).

The Startup Genome takes a look at a number of factors, including talent, capital,  infrastructure support, number of new startups created, the performance of those startups and how quickly the communities adopt new technologies.

The improvement in the ranking comes even though other startup hubs — such as New York and Boston — attract far more capital. (Even though Seattle is having quite a November with more than $110 million already flowing into startups here this month).

In fact, the lack of capital, not to mention the disappearing ranks of VC firms such as OVP Venture Partners and Frazier Technology Ventures, is probably one of the biggest weaknesses at the moment in Seattle in my view. Seattle ranked 7th in the Startup Genome report in the funding index, which measures risk capital available to startup companies.

Interestingly, however, the report found that Seattle ranked near the bottom in terms of the Startup Output Index, which measures “the total activity of entrepreneurship in the region, controlling for population size and the maturity of startups in the region.”

That placement is a bit surprising to me. But I’d suspect it is tied to Seattle’s relative youth as a startup hub, especially as it relates to communities like Boston and Silicon Valley.

Here’s a look at the breakdown of the different communities:

The Startup Genome report ranks 20 startup hubs around the globe.
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