Newly released data from the Annual Survey of Entrepreneurs indicates that areas hoping to build a vibrant startup community would do well to welcome immigrant entrepreneurs. The research shows that the San Jose metropolitan area – often considered the heart of Silicon Valley – is the metro with the highest share of immigrant entrepreneurs in the United States. Looking at the impact of immigrant entrepreneurs through the lens of the Kauffman Index, a new Growthology post highlights metro areas in the United States with the highest percentage of immigrant entrepreneurs.
Immigrants are a major driver of the American entrepreneurial economy. More than 40% of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or their children, over 50% of American billion-dollar “unicorn” startups have at least one immigrant founder, and immigrants are nearly twice as likely as the native-born to start a new company.
And thanks to newly released data from the Annual Survey of Entrepreneurs (ASE), we now know that, perhaps unsurprisingly, the San Jose metropolitan area – often considered the heart of Silicon Valley – is the metro with highest share of immigrant entrepreneurs in the U.S.
Both our recently released research compilation on immigration and the latest Growthology post on immigrant entrepreneurship shows the importance of immigrant entrepreneurs to the economy. In this blog post, we further explore firms owned by immigrants using the recently released Annual Survey of Entrepreneurs (ASE) data. The ASE is the largest annual survey of American entrepreneurs ever done, and is produced by the Census Bureau in a public-private partnership with the Kauffman Foundation and the Minority Business Development Agency.
Here, we are using data on individuals who were not U.S. citizens at birth as a proxy for U.S. immigrants. Although there are some caveats associated with this assumption, in most cases, non-U.S. citizens at birth are arguably likely to have immigrated to the U.S. if they own a business here.
Read more @ https://www.kauffman.org/blogs/growthology/2016/10/want-to-be-like-silicon-valley.