Best Cities to Start a Business in Wisconsin

Wisconsin, known for cheese and football, is a great option for entrepreneurs looking to build a tech startup. The state promises low initial costs, cheap housing rates, a manageable cost of living, and a wide pool of prospective employees emerging from the state’s universities.

Madison, in particular, is being hailed for its exciting new tech scene. The city benefits from being home to the University of Wisconsin, one of the best schools in the Midwest, as well as from having a reputation as a progressive, forward-thinking city.

The scene is growing, too, as indicated by its #5 rank in a study of tech industry growth in the country’s top 100 metropolitan areas done by the Brooking Institute. What’s more, 2016 witnessed a 70% increase in venture capital funding in Madison, tallying up to $114 million in total. As these figures indicate, there has been no better time than the present for starting a tech business in Wisconsin.

Only cities with over 50,000 inhabitants are reported in the results. Some data had to be interpolated to the county level and extrapolated to all the cities in the county. We concentrated on the following metrics to obtain our ranking: Cost of living, Best state for business, Unemployment, Kauffman index, and Universities.