A City With No Walls

Immigrants have been flocking to Philadelphia because it’s a sanctuary city—and cheaper than its neighbor New York. Philly counts more than 40,000 immigrant entrepreneurs, running everything from tech companies (Cloudamize, Haystack Informatics) to food trucks (Chez Yasmine, Delicias). This spring saw the second citywide Immigrant Business Week, kicked off by Mayor Jim Kenney, who has traveled to SxSW to stump for Philly startups. On the tech front, the University of Pennsylvania’s graduate program ranks third and its undergrad program ranks fifth globally in the production of venture-backed entrepreneurs, according to PitchBook. Comcast-NBCUniversal, Philly’s largest tech private employer, has a new accelerator, whose first class includes a game console startup from the son of Atari and Chuck E. Cheese’s founder Nolan Bushnell. And the city continues to brew successful coffee companies, including La Colombe, now in five states and D.C., and Saxbys Coffee, which is colonizing college campuses along the East Coast.