Every day there is a new best of city list being published. What are the best places to live, who has the best food, what’s the most affordable region, who has the highest growth in tech employment, and so on. What happens when you stack up all the relevant metrics to assess the overall startup environment.

On today’s episode we talk with Farshad Fahimi, Director of Data Strategy at Startup Genome about their annual ranking report on global startup ecosystem. We discuss the big observations in this year’s report, what does the data say about Austin, and how does our future look.

About Austin Next: Austin continues transforming into the next innovation powerhouse. In this podcast, we explore how Central Texas is growing…The people and companies, the industries and infrastructure, the macro and micro trends that come together to create the future of Austin.

We want to answer one basic question… What’s next Austin?

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Episode Highlights:

· Startup Genome has amassed 10 years of data on startup ecosystems to help enable regions to grow their ecosystem based on their culture and innovation

· They measure these ecosystems based on metrics in Performance, Funding, Startup Experience, Knowledge, and Legacy

· The biggest macro trends they saw this year were 1) a shifting to later stage investing, 2) the continued rise of India, which was paralleled with the decline in China, 3) and the overall dispersion of innovation as there are now 113 ecosystems with at least 1 unicorn

· Austin declined this past year from #20 to #25 mainly due to the relative size of our peer groups in overall valuation

· Austin ecosystem is currently valued at $43B, which is a 119% growth since last year

· Give the recent rise of early/mid-stage funding rounds and the growing number sustainable exits, Austin is primed well for the future

Additional analysis:

We also had the opportunity to talk with Dr. Fahimi prior to the publication to pull out some Austin specific insights. Here a few additional analyses that you won’t see in the report.

· Over the past decade, Austin investment growth rate has kept pace with the traditional hubs of Silicon Valley, Boston, and Los Angeles

o Total VC investment — 2012 was $566M, 2021 was $3,882M, almost 600% increase

o This growth has been seen at all levels from early stage ($173M to $835M) to Exits (40 to 67)

· Our sector diversity remains strong with no single vertical dominating investment

o A little over 1/3 of funding is going towards traditional tech sectors, AL/ML/Data, and SaaS

o Life sciences, Prop Tech, Fintech, and Mobile are the next largest sectors receiving about a quarter of the deal dollar share

o The remaining nearly 40% of share is spread across nearly 50 different industries as diverse as Advanced Mfg, web3, space, gaming, and foodtech

· Our sector strengths lie in both traditional arenas and emerging sectors

o When the ecosystem’s potential is compared to the global potential of these sectors, Austin stands out in AI/Big Data, Blockchain, and Cybersecurity.

o Advanced Manufacturing (AMR), Life Sciences, and Fintech stand out as high global potential sectors that are growing at a faster rate here in Austin