The charm of walking down a street lined with unique mom and pop shops shouldn’t be understated, but those mom and pop shops aren’t just charming, they are also dense with character that radiates out to the surrounding area. Not to mention, small businesses are a bastion of the American dream.
Even though owning a small business may not be quite as easy as it once was thanks to the rise of giants like Amazon and Walmart, the death of the mom and pop shop may have been exaggerated. Take San Jose, for example. As CNBC reports, San Jose, Calif. is the best place in the country to start a business, according to an annual ranking conducted by Biz2Credit. After ranking 18th on the list last year, the tech boom has turned the city's small business prospects around.
Following San Jose on the list are New York, the San Francisco-Oakland area, Miami-Fort Lauderdale, and Los Angeles. The results may be a bit surprising considering all of these areas are incredibly expensive, but there is more than goes into the rankings than just the cost of doing business.
Biz2Credit creates its list by looking at the health of small businesses in the area, the rate of small business creation, and the economic ecosystem for entrepreneurs, which includes the cost of doing business, tax climate, and local talent pool.
Referring to mom and pop shops and small businesses interchangeably may be a bit of a misnomer, as in order to be considered a small business for this particular list it meant a business had less than 250 employees, was in operation for more than a year, and had less than $10 million in annual revenues. However, the stereotypical mom and pop shop would still be included in this definition.
Part of what helped San Jose jump to the top of the list was the fact that it is one of the leading cities in terms of new company formation because of its vibrant economy and GDP growth of 6.2 percent.
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