New York City best place globally for women to start a business

New York City is the best place in the world for women to start a business according to Dell, which collaborated with research company IHS and the Technology  and Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard. Dell had commissioned the research on the best cities for female entrepreneurs to start and scale a high-growth business.

The US had four other cities in the top 25 with New York (No 1), San Francisco Bay Area (No 2), Washington, DC (No 7), Seattle (No 10) and Austin (No 12). The other cities in the top 10 were London (No 3), Stockholm (No 4), Singapore (No 5), Toronto (No 6), Sydney (No 8) and Paris (No 9).

In conjunction with the 2016 Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES), Dell released the results of its in-depth research analysing communities around the world on the basis of the most conducive for high-potential women entrepreneurs (HPWE). The 2016 GES comes as the seventh worldwide convocation on entrepreneurship, this year being held in the heart of Silicon Valley at Stanford University, 22-24 June. The summit would be addressed by President Obama on Friday.

With the launch of the Dell Women Entrepreneur Cities Index (WE Cities), Dell aimed to measure the ability of cities to attract and support high-potential women entrepreneurs, which Dell defines as those with the capability to grow businesses generating $1 million or more in annual revenue.

Research for the report opened with an April 2016 symposium chaired by David Ricketts, a fellow at the Technology and Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard.

Ricketts said, the  symposium brought together 40 global thought leaders, women entrepreneurs, academics, and media to discuss whether access to markets, capital, talent, and technology were the four major factors affecting the ability for women-owned businesses to grow.

In the course of the symposium, the group decided to include a fifth factor- culture, which measured the prevalence of mentors, networks, and role models as well as public policies that enabled women to assume leadership positions and achieve success, Ricketts said.

The Top 25 Global Cities For Women Entrepreneurs are:

• New York City
• San Francisco Bay Area
• London
• Stockholm
• Singapore
• Toronto
• Washington, D.C.
• Sydney
• Paris
• Seattle
• Munich
• Austin
• Beijing
• Hong Kong
• Taipei
• Shanghai
• Tokyo
• Mexico City
• Sao Paulo
• Seoul
• Milan
• Delhi
• Johannesburg
• Jakarta
• Istanbul