

Massachusetts and Colorado Top Entrepreneurial State Rankings - ai09
http://www.formds.com/posts/massachusetts-and-colorado-top-entrepreneurial-state-rankings

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ai09
HN,

I created this analysis to get another view of entrepreneurial activity in the
US.

On a tech note, these graphs were created with Protovis, a JS toolkit
discussed recently here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1808334> Since
Protovis and IE don't yet work well together (IE9 may change that), the page
degrades for IE users to show PNGs instead of the JS SVGs.

The inspiration for this visualization came from the Stanford Visualization
Group's choropleth here: <http://vis.stanford.edu/protovis/ex/choropleth.html>

I would appreciate comments and feedback! Thank you.

~~~
pg
It seems like the rankings are mostly an artifact of where state borders
happen to be. Why don't you do it based on smaller regions, like metropolitan
areas?

~~~
ai09
Thanks, Paul. I'm doing some of that as well by geocoding all the filings. For
instance, here are the most recent filings from California, geocoded down to
the exact address:

[http://www.formds.com/filings/advanced_filter?filters_params...](http://www.formds.com/filings/advanced_filter?filters_params\[date_select\]=&filters_params\[size_select\]=&filters_params\[industry_select\]=&filters_params\[new_amended_select\]=&filters_params\[equity_debt_select\]=&filters_params\[state_select\]=CA&filters_params\[miles_select\]=&zip_code=&filters_params\[list_or_map_select\]=Show+on+a+map)

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pwntifex
As a Las Vegas entrepreneur I'm surprised to see Nevada so highly ranked. I
knew Zappos had done a lot to legitimize Vegas as a potential location for
startups, but I still don't see too much of a startup community in general
here.

Perhaps we're getting some residual fundraising benefits being sandwiched
between CA and CO.

~~~
ai09
Las Vegas dominates the fundings but the Reno area has a very large number as
well. The state looks split in two!

See below for detailed Google maps version
[http://www.formds.com/filings/advanced_filter?filters_params...](http://www.formds.com/filings/advanced_filter?filters_params\[date_select\]=&filters_params\[size_select\]=&filters_params\[industry_select\]=&filters_params\[new_amended_select\]=New+Filings&filters_params\[equity_debt_select\]=&filters_params\[state_select\]=NV&filters_params\[miles_select\]=&zip_code=&filters_params\[list_or_map_select\]=Show+on+a+map)

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ssskai
Here's another ranking of the best states to do business in. (Not trying to
trump your website, but just giving some more resources for folks!)

<http://www.cnbc.com/id/37554006/>

~~~
ai09
Thanks, ssskai. That article was helpful to me as the writer did a good job of
describing the study and the relative merits of the different states.

I'm learning that creating the writing to describe a visualization is often as
hard as creating the visualization itself.

