7 Markets Where Investor Capital Seems to Grow on Trees

Businesses in the San Francisco area may have easier access to investor capital than businesses in Silicon Valley do — and the Buffalo, New York, area may have more investor mojo than Seattle, or Denver.

The U.S. Census Bureau has given financial services marketers peeks at businesses’ financing arrangements in a batch of business financing data from the 2015 Annual Survey of Entrepreneurs.

Since 2014, manages of that survey program have asked businesses across the United States about use of investor funding.

The cut-off for the top investor funding category is relatively modest: just $250,000 in funding from “angel investors,” venture capital firms, Wall Street investors, or other equity investors in the past year.

The New York City metropolitan statistical area ranks first in terms of the total number of businesses that raised more than $250,000 from investors in 2015: 1,774 reached that threshold.

But the New York City-area total is so high partly because that MSA has about 20 million residents.

After adjusting for population, the New York City area ranks just 15th in terms of the number of high-outside-investment companies per 100,000 residents.

The high-outside-investment ratio for 2015 ranged from a low of 3.3 per 100,000 residents, in the Cincinnati area, to a high of 27 per 100,000 residents, in the San Francsico area. The median was about eight high-outside-investment companies per 100,000 residents.

Insurance agents, financial planners and other financial professionals can find the underlying data here.

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Financial services marketers have to seek out other sources of information to put the data in context. But marketers could use the data to to locate unexpected opportunities.

Companies that have been looking for prospects for advanced financial planning services at startups in Silicon Valley may find that they have overlooked potential opportunities in places like Buffalo, or Minneapolis.

Financial professionals with clients who would like to invest in privately held businesses might find that owners and executives in investor deserts like Cincinnati will leap for a chance to network with private investors.