The Silicon South Is Rising
When Scott Millwood was growing up and going to college near Greenville, South Carolina, he says, “I didn’t see it as a place where I’d want to live.” With the textile industry moving its mills to Asia, “the city faced a really tough transition.” Millwood remembers the grand old Poinsett Hotel, erected in 1925, sitting vacant downtown. “There were no windows, and homeless people were burning trash-can fires in the fourth-floor ballroom.”
Today, Scott is the chair of Next, a networking and mentoring organization for Greenville entrepreneurs, and the founder of an A.I.-powered
No. 39
Oklahoma City, OK Anchored by two major research institutes—the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation and the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center—this state capital is a hotbed for life sciences businesses. Entrepreneurs are also finding improved access to funding sources. Among others, there’s i2E, a nonprofit that’s so far doled out $61 million across 169 companies in the region.
No. 40
Minneapolis-St. PaulBloomington, MN-WI Consumer-product giants including Target, Cargill, and Land O’Lakes are not only major Twin Cities employers—they’re also active startup boosters. In 2017, Land O’Lakes launched its own dairy industry–focused accelerator, while the following year, Cargill—with partners Techstars and Ecolab—launched a foodfocused accelerator dubbed Farm to Fork. Target also operates an accelerator, for retail startups.
No. 41
Oxnard-Thousand OaksVentura, CA
Drawing from a wealth of scientific talent at nearby research institutions such as UCLA, Caltech, and Cal Poly Pomona, Oxnard and its environs are a growing haven for biotech companies. The area is also getting spillover from L.A., the northern suburbs of which are just over an hour away by car.
No. 42
Columbia, SC See facing page.
No. 43
Cape Coral-Fort Myers, FL The Great Recession rocked this coastal community, but the area’s economy is finally starting to turn—helped by favorable population trends and a growing enthusiasm for starting up. Promising companies founded out of Florida Gulf Coast University’s four-year-old student incubator have so far generated $10.2 million in combined revenue.
No. 44
Columbus, OH
Success stories like digital auto insurer Root Insurance, which is valued at more than $3.6 billion, are resonating with investors. Columbus-area startups captured more than $494 million in venture capital in the first three quarters of 2019, surpassing last year’s total funding amount by more than $100 million.
digital-assistant startup called Yesflow. It’s the second successful tech company he’s started in the area. (Customer Effective, his first, was a five-time Inc. 5000 honoree that eventually sold to Hitachi.) As for the Poinsett, it, like the rest of downtown Greenville, has been handsomely restored and is thriving. It’s a Westin now.
Over the past three decades, Greenville has completed a remarkable transformation. Today, it debuts on the Surge Cities list at No. 33— one of three South Carolina cities, including Charleston and Columbia, to appear on the list for the first time. Each has drawn on unique strengths to build its startup scene, but all three also benefit from one another’s success.
Greenville’s turnaround began 25 years ago, explains Chamber of Commerce president Carlos Phillips, when city leaders began aggressively recruiting manufacturers to tap into the city’s underemployed workforce and tax incentives. They succeeded in landing factories from both BMW and Michelin. “That got us out of the old economy and into the new assembly economy,” he says. But then, when an early Greenvillebased tech company called Datastream was acquired in 2003 for $200 million, “people woke up and said there’s a new revolution underway. We need to be a part of it.”
Today, Greenville has the sixth-highest rate of business creation in the nation, and much of its startup ecosystem centers on business-tobusiness software companies. Some of the more exciting ones—Netalytics, ChartSpan, Kiyatec— make applications for medical use. Clemson University and several smaller area colleges turn out a steady stream of talent, who now want to stick around, and the lifestyle afforded by the city’s location near the Blue Ridge Mountains attracts outsiders.
Enviable physical assets are also part of the draw in Charleston—a three-hour drive southeast from Greenville on Interstate 26. The church-spire-dotted Holy City (No. 7 on this year’s Surge Cities list) has long been a tourist destination, thanks to its many beaches and waterways, graceful old buildings, and deep history. In recent decades, though, a new generation of culinary talent has transformed the city’s Old South hospitality into a platform for creativity that has extended from the city’s world-renowned restaurants into new packaged-goods brands such as Cannonborough Craft Soda and the New Primal Beef Jerky.
In the same time frame, the number of tech startups also has risen in Charleston, thanks in large part to the alumni of several early successes such as Blackbaud (a now-public maker of software for nonprofits), Benefitfocus (also public; HR software), and Automated Trading Desk (acquired by Citigroup for $680 million). “The network of talent that came to town to work for those companies spun out their own companies and created the tech scene,” says Patrick Bryant, founder of digital developer Code/+/Trust and co-founder of the Harbor Entrepreneur Center co-working space. Bryant notes that many Charleston startups support industries that have long powered the city’s economy: the military, hospitality, a thriving port, and advanced manufacturing (the area houses Boeing, Volvo, and Mercedes plants).
Almost exactly halfway between Charleston and Greenville on the I-26 corridor, Columbia (this year’s No. 42 city) is the state capital and home to the University of South Carolina—which gives it a disproportionate amount of intellectual firepower for a city with a population of 150,000. Although its entrepreneurial scene is a few steps behind those of its Surge Cities brethren in South Carolina, that’s beginning to change.
Laura Boccanfuso, the founder of Vän Robotics, left a position at Yale University to start her company in Columbia,