If it’s Tuesday, it’s primary day somewhere. But this isn’t just any primary day, it’s Super Tuesday! Today, voters in 13 states (Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia and Wyoming) will cast ballots for their preferred candidate in the Democratic and Republican primaries.
As we recently detailed in our annual reporting of venture capital investment by MSA, you don’t have to be an entrepreneur living in a specific city, state or region to receive venture capital investment. There are pockets of innovation in local entrepreneurial ecosystems in all corners of our country.
With that in mind, we thought we’d take this opportunity to see how the ecosystems of each of the 13 Super Tuesday primary states stack up. Here’s what we found:
- The 13 Super Tuesday primary states are home to 798 startups that received venture funding in 2015
- Venture capital investors deployed $9.6 billion to those 798 companies to help them scale and grow their businesses.
- Massachusetts has the most venture activity of the 13 states, followed by Texas in second and Colorado in third.
- Arkansas saw the highest grow rate among ALL U.S. states (not just Super Tuesday primary states) in annual number of companies receiving venture funding from 2010 to 2015 and Oklahoma saw the third highest growth rate among all U.S. states.
