Startup Ecosystem Rankings Index 2021 - All You Need to Know

In 2021 an accelerated change has been experienced. As the world manages to innovate its way out of a devastating pandemic, it is clear that a new reality has emerged. Trends such as E-commerce and remote work have accelerated at a rapid speed, stimulating us toward an inevitable future where our digital presence not only matters but is more dominant than our physical presence.

StartupBlink, an innovation research center, has launched the Startup Ecosystem Rankings Index 2021. The StartupBlink Global Startup Ecosystem Index ranks startup ecosystems across 1000 cities and 100 countries worldwide, providing ecosystem rankings for each country and city. This index aims to feature and organize hundreds of startup hubs instead of highlighting a few globally recognized winners. This index considers startups and other critical startup ecosystem players like coworking spaces, accelerators, investors, leaders, and many more.

The 2021 Index ranks 1,000 cities and 100 countries from all around the world. By tracking both momentum and trends within the startup ecosystem since 2017. This year’s report also emphasizes many new sections, including sections on Analysis by Sub Score, Industry rankings, the Top Island Cities Ranking, Analysis by Population, City Ecosystems in Unranked Countries, and even an order based on unique entities such as Unicorns and Pantheons.

Ranking Criteria used by StartupBlink's Startup Ecosystem

StartupBlink's country and city rankings have a total score, which is the sum of 3 columns that measure quantity, quality, and business environment. The company puts the ranking results based on the total score and covers the critical information on each country or city ranked.

The Top Country Rankings

This year the top 5 countries have all maintained their ranks compared to last year. However, there are numerous exciting insights.

The United States supports a massive lead over the 2nd ranked the United Kingdom, showing a solid and aggressive innovation scene across the 267 USA cities ranked in this report.

Another exciting development is a change in the group we refer to as the "Big 4" Startup Ecosystems: the US, UK, Israel, and Canada. Canada is still ranked 4th and is now much closer to the startup ecosystem of Germany. Germany is at the 5th spot compared to the UK and Israel. Consequently, the term "Big 3" club can now be labeled, led by the US, as having a massive gap over the UK and Israel.

Methodology for producing Global Startup Ecosystem Index

Methodology for producing the Global Startup Ecosystem Index starts with guiding principles, providing basic definitions, and then discussing the elements comprising each section of the total score. Certain guiding principles help for producing the Global startup Ecosystem. In order to make sure that the rankings are as authentic as possible, they have an objective, quantifiable data that one can comparatively measure across regions, countries, and cities.

The company refrained from practicing personal tools such as surveys and interviews and instead used data accumulated immediately from the StartupBlink map or has arrived from integration with a global data partner.

Integration of scores

Each place has a total score, which is the sum of 3 scores measuring Quantity, Quality, and Business environment. A comprehensive analysis of Subscore Results is available later in this report. The predominant importance of the total score is comparative. It is used as a tool for sorting and ranking ecosystems and provides insights into the gaps between ecosystems in absolute terms.

A sturdy startup ecosystem involves startups and must have supporting organizations that provide resources, networking, and access to capital. The Quantity score indicates the activity level of an ecosystem through its stakeholders and other signals. Among the elements taken into account for the calculation of the Quantity, the score is the number of Startups, Coworking Spaces, Accelerators, and Number of Startup-related Meetups. Some of this data is supplemented from our Global Data Partners, mainly from Meetup and Coworker.

Numerous integrations with partners, such as Semrush and CrunchBase, and hundreds of thousands of data points to analyze the Quality of each startup ecosystem. Elements that are taken into account for the calculation of the Quality score are:

• Traction of over 70,000 entities in all ecosystems (including traffic, domain authority, customer base)
• Presence of branches and R&D centers of International Technology Corporations
• Associates of multinational companies (e.g., WeWork spaces)
• Total private sector investment in thousands of startup ecosystems Number of employees per startup

The third and final factor affecting the rankings is unique since it focuses on general indicators connected to infrastructure, business environment, critical ecosystem mass, and the ability to operate as a startup founder in each country freely. The Business Environment score, to which we shortly refer as the Business score, mainly focuses on parameters at the country level since national infrastructure, policies, and legislation generally affect all cities within a country. The main component of the Business score is a weighted average that takes into account a broad range of elements within each country, as presented in the list below. In addition, the Business score also measures a threshold of critical mass in both quantity and Quality across all ecosystems, which can explain the difference in score between cities in the same country.