of first financings over the thirteen-year period, female-founded companies are underrepresented—particularly when compared to the other areas of the economy discussed earlier. Third, the female-founded share of startups is growing—from 7 percent in 2005 to 21 percent in 2017.

However, since this blog is primarily concerned with geography, the remainder of the post will focus on the distribution of female-founded startups across metropolitan areas. To simplify, I’ll look only at the top 50 cities in terms of first financings between 2005 and 2017. These cities accounted for 90 percent of startup activity over the period.

The maps here illustrate the number of first financings over the thirteen-year period (dot size) as well as the female-founded share (colors) of such financings. The cities with the highest portions of female-founded startups (darkestbeing driven by cities that are more welcome to female founders.

Clearly, it is still early days for an established evidence-base in this area and warrants further research exploration.

Most of the fastest growing metropolitan areas are located on the coasts. What do they have in common? Almost always, the most successful cities excel at entrepreneurship.

As a group, such metro areas have found ways to foster job creation for their residents by amassing entrepreneurs and the early-stage financing that supports the process of company formation and scale-up.

Which is why the recent State of the Heartland Factbook, published by Brookings and the Walton Family Foundation, looks closely at Heartland states’ and metro areas’ current shares of employment at young firms (five years old or less) as a core indicator of economic