LendingTree Study Reveals the Cities with the Youngest Entrepreneurs

Staff Report

Thursday, February 6th, 2020

Entrepreneurial hopefuls might be able to achieve their aim of founding a business sooner rather than later— if they live in the right place. LendingTree, the nation's leading online loan marketplace, today released its study revealing the major U.S. cities with the youngest business founders and found that New Orleans, Salt Lake City and Philadelphia took the top spots.

To identify the cities with the youngest entrepreneurs, researchers compared ages of business founders on their companies' dates of origination in the 50 largest U.S. cities using anonymized data from business owners seeking funding through LendingTree. 

Key findings:

New Orleans has the youngest entrepreneurs on average, moving up from its No. 3 position last year and knocking Salt Lake City from the top spot. The average age of recent business founders in the Big Easy is 37.

Salt Lake City stays in the running at second place, while Philadelphia comes in at No. 3.

Sacramento has the oldest founders, with the average entrepreneur starting a business shortly after turning 41.

Millennials are the most prevalent entrepreneurs in each city in our study, while Gen Xers are the second most common generation among new business founders.

Here are the 10 U.S. cities with the youngest business founders:

New Orleans

Salt Lake City

Philadelphia

Milwaukee

Hartford, Conn.

Columbus, Ohio

Oklahoma City

Minneapolis

Providence, R.I.

Boston

To view the full report, visit https://www.lendingtree.com/business/small/places-with-the-youngest-entrepreneurs/.